Does democratization reduce the cost of credit? Using global syndicated loan data from 1984 to 2014, we find that … democratization has a sizeable negative effect on loan spreads: a one-point increase in the zero-to-ten Polity IV index of democracy … democratization, and to a battery of other sensitivity tests. We thus highlight the lower cost of loans as one relevant mechanism …

multiple time-series estimation strategies. We find no robust long-run effect of oil rents per capita on Polity, Civil …