We analyze the interplay of political elites’ de facto power, democracy and education based on a theoretical framework inspired by the model in Acemoglu and Robinson (2006). We identify conditions under which the elite may overcompensate the loss of de jure power (as a result of political reform) by investing too much in de facto power so that the probability to have de facto power is higher under democracy than under non-democracy. The analysis also shows that depending on whether the income effect of education is strong or weak and whether citizens’ education has increasing or decreasing returns, the elite may or may not support education subsidy under democracy. We show that under certain assumptions the political elites may treat democracy and spending on citizens’ education as substitutes. We comment on the implications of the results for understanding why countries that started from comparable initial conditions may follow divergent development paths.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by ICER - International Centre for Economic Research in its series ICER Working Papers with number
18-2009.
Length: 27 pages Date of creation: Jul 2009 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:icr:wpicer:18-2009
Contact details of provider: Postal: Viale Settimio Severo, 63 - 10133 Torino - Italy Phone: +39 011 6604828 Fax: +39 011 6600082 Email: Web page: http://www.icer.it More information through EDIRC
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Alessandra Calosso).
Related research
Keywords:
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson & James A. Robinson & Pierre Yared, 2005.
"From Education to Democracy?,"
NBER Working Papers
11204, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson & James A. Robinson & Pierre Yared, 2008.
"Income and Democracy,"
American Economic Review,
American Economic Association, vol. 98(3), pages 808-42, June.
[Downloadable!]
Other versions:
Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson & James Robinson & Pierre Yared, 2005.
"Income and Democracy,"
NBER Working Papers
11205, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Acemoglu, Daron & Johnson, Simon & Robinson, James A & Yared, Pierre, 2005.
"Income and Democracy,"
CEPR Discussion Papers
5273, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)