Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/146477 
Year of Publication: 
2016
Series/Report no.: 
IDB Working Paper Series No. IDB-WP-694
Publisher: 
Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Washington, DC
Abstract: 
This article challenges recent findings that democracy has sizable effects on economic growth. As extensive political science research indicates that economic turmoil is responsible for causing or facilitating many democratic transitions, the paper focuses on this endogeneity concern. Using a worldwide survey of 165 country-specific democracy experts conducted for this study, the paper separates democratic transitions into those occurring for reasons related to economic turmoil, here called endogenous, and those grounded in reasons more exogenous to economic growth. The behavior of economic growth following these more exogenous democratizations strongly indicates that democracy does not cause growth. Consequently, the common positive association between democracy and economic growth is driven by endogenous democratization episodes (i.e., due to faulty identification).
Subjects: 
Democracy
Growth
Democratic transitions
Endogeneity
JEL: 
E02
E20
N40
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by-nc-nd Logo
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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