Journal ArticleDOI
Democracy and Economic Growth: A Historical Perspective
TLDR
In this paper, the authors argue that the causal effect of democracy can be measured by a country's regime status in a particular year (T), which is correlated with its growth performance in a subsequent period (T+l).Abstract:
Recent studies appear to show that democracy has no robust association with economic growth. Yet all such work assumes that the causal effect of democracy can be measured by a country's regime status in a particular year (T), which is correlated with its growth performance in a subsequent period (T+l). The authors argue that democracy must be understood as a stock, rather than a level, measure. That is, a country's growth performance is affected by the number of years it has been democratic, in addition to the degree of democracy experienced during that period. In this fashion, democracy is reconceptualized as a historical, rather than a contemporary, variable—with the assumption that long-run historical patterns may help scholars to understand present trends. The authors speculate that these secular-historical influences operate through four causal pathways, each of which may be understood as a type of capital: physical capital, human capital, social capital, and political capital. This argument is tested in a crosscountry analysis and is shown to be robust in a wide variety of specifications and formats.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Case Selection Techniques in Case Study Research A Menu of Qualitative and Quantitative Options
Jason Seawright,John Gerring +1 more
TL;DR: Seven case selection procedures are considered, each of which facilitates a different strategy for within-case analysis and discusses quantitative approaches that meet the goals of the approach, while still requiring information that can reasonably be gathered for a large number of cases.
Journal ArticleDOI
The Role of Social Capital in Financial Development
TL;DR: In this article, the authors identify the effect of social capital on financial development by exploiting social capital differences within Italy and find that households are more likely to use checks, invest less in cash and more in stock, have higher access to institutional credit, and make less use of informal credit.
Journal ArticleDOI
The Role of Social Capital in Financial Development
Luigi Guiso,Paola Sapienza,Paola Sapienza,Paola Sapienza,Luigi Zingales,Luigi Zingales,Luigi Zingales +6 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors exploit the well-known differences in social capital across different parts of Italy to identify the effect of social capital on financial development, and show that the behavior of movers is still affected by the level of Social capital present in the province where they were born.
Journal ArticleDOI
Clientelism, Credibility, and the Policy Choices of Young Democracies
TL;DR: The authors identified for the first time systematic performance differences between younger and older democracies and argued that these are driven by the inability of political competitors to make broadly credible preelectoral promises to voters.
Journal ArticleDOI
A Complete Data Set of Political Regimes, 1800–2007
TL;DR: In this article, the authors describe a widely used data set on democracy, covering 1800-2007 and 219 countries, which represents the most comprehensive dichotomous measure of democracy currently availab...
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Democracy, Volatility, and Economic Development
TL;DR: In this article, the authors study the determinants of average growth and its volatility as a two-equation system, and find that higher levels of democracy and diversification lower volatility, whereas volatility itself reduces growth.
Book
Power and popular protest: Latin American social movements
TL;DR: In a wide-ranging investigation of the causes and consequences of protest movements in Latin America, the authors found that the patterning of defiance is shaped by structural forces that are independent of whatever rage and psychological states of mind that prompted people to protest.
BookDOI
Democracy and the Rule of Law
TL;DR: Maravall and Przeworski as discussed by the authors discuss the relationship between the rule of law and political power in the Rechtsstaat of the Netherlands, and the question of whether a dictatorship can be defined as a dictatorship.
Journal ArticleDOI
Are two heads better than one? Monetary policy by committee
Alan S. Blinder,John Morgan +1 more
TL;DR: This paper found that group decisions are on average better than individual decisions regardless of whether the groups make decisions by unanimity or majority rule, and that simple mechanical theories of group decisionmaking do not explain the results.