DP5654 Democratic Capital: The Nexus of Political and Economic Change

Author(s):	Torsten Persson, Guido Tabellini
Publication Date:	May 2006
Keyword(s):	economic growth, hazard rates, political regimes
JEL(s):	D70, H11, N10, O11
Programme Areas:	International Macroeconomics, Public Economics
Link to this Page:	cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=5654

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 sucessful 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.