Year: 2006
Type: report
Abstract: We study the joint dynamics of economic and political change.Predictions of the simple model that we formulate in the paper get considerable support in a panel of data on political regimes and GDP per capita for about 150 countries over 150 years.Democratic capital --measured by a nation's historical experience with democracy and by the incidence of democracy in its neighborhood -reduces the exit rate from democracy and raises the exit rate from autocracy.In democracies, a higher stock of democratic capital stimulates growth in an indirect way by decreasing the probability of a successful coup.Our results suggest a virtuous circle, where the accumulation of physical and democratic capital reinforce each other, promoting economic development jointly with the consolidation of democracy.
DOI: 10.3386/w12175
Authors: Torsten Persson, Guido Tabellini
Language: English
Subfield: Economics and Econometrics
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: Vetenskapsrådet
OpenAlex ID: W3121472009