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Rain and the Democratic Window of Opportunity

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Author Info
Markus Brückner
Antonio Ciccone ()

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Abstract

According to the economic approach to political transitions, transitory negative economic shocks can open a window of opportunity for democratic improvement. Testing the theory requires a source of transitory shocks to the aggregate economy. We use rainfall shocks in Sub-Saharan African countries and find that negative rainfall shocks are followed by significant improvement in democratic institutions. Instrumental variables estimates indicate that following a transitory negative income shock of 1 percent, democracy scores improve by 0.9 percentage points and the probability of a democratic transition increases by 1.3 percentage points.

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Publisher Info
Paper provided by Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra in its series Economics Working Papers with number 1114.

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Date of creation: Oct 2008
Date of revision: Oct 2009
Handle: RePEc:upf:upfgen:1114

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Related research
Keywords: Democratization; transitory economic shocks;

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
O0 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - General
P0 - Economic Systems - - General

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  1. Joshua Angrist & Alan Krueger, 2001. "Instrumental Variables and the Search for Identification: From Supply and Demand to Natural Experiments," Working Papers 834, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section.. [Downloadable!]
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  2. Torsten Persson & Guido Tabellini, 2007. "The Growth Effect of Democracy: Is It Heterogenous and How Can It Be Estimated?," NBER Working Papers 13150, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  3. Edward L. Glaeser & Rafael La Porta & Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes & Andrei Shleifer, 2004. "Do Institutions Cause Growth?," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 9(3), pages 271-303, 09. [Downloadable!]
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  4. Torsten Persson & Guido Tabellini, 2006. "Democracy and Development: The Devil in the Details," CESifo Working Paper Series CESifo Working Paper No. , CESifo Group Munich. [Downloadable!]
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  5. Angus Deaton, 2005. "Measuring Poverty in a Growing World (or Measuring Growth in a Poor World)," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 87(1), pages 1-19, 04. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  6. Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson & James Robinson & Pierre Yared, 2005. "Income and Democracy," NBER Working Papers 11205, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  7. Stock, James H & Wright, Jonathan H & Yogo, Motohiro, 2002. "A Survey of Weak Instruments and Weak Identification in Generalized Method of Moments," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 20(4), pages 518-29, October.
  8. Acemoglu, Daron & Johnson, Simon & Robinson, James A & Yared, Pierre, 2007. "Reevaluating the Modernization Hypothesis," CEPR Discussion Papers 6430, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  9. Jess Benhabib & Adam Przeworski, 2006. "The political economy of redistribution under democracy," Economic Theory, Springer, vol. 29(2), pages 271-290, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  10. Heston, Alan, 1994. "A brief review of some problems in using national accounts data in level of output comparisons and growth studies," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(1), pages 29-52, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  11. Daron Acemoglu & James A. Robinson, 2001. "A Theory of Political Transitions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(4), pages 938-963, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  12. Adam Przeworski, 2005. "Democracy as an equilibrium," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 123(3), pages 253-273, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  13. Blundell, Richard & Bond, Stephen, 1998. "Initial conditions and moment restrictions in dynamic panel data models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 87(1), pages 115-143, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  14. Paxson, Christina H, 1992. "Using Weather Variability to Estimate the Response of Savings to Transitory Income in Thailand," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(1), pages 15-33, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  15. Fuller, Wayne A, 1977. "Some Properties of a Modification of the Limited Information Estimator," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 45(4), pages 939-53, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  16. repec:fth:prinin:455 is not listed on IDEAS
  17. repec:cup:cbooks:9780521671422 is not listed on IDEAS
  18. Jinyong Hahn & Jerry Hausman, 2003. "Weak Instruments: Diagnosis and Cures in Empirical Econometrics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(2), pages 118-125, May. [Downloadable!]
  19. Elias Papaioannou & Gregorios Siourounis, 2007. "Initial Factors Behind The Third Wave of Democratization," Working Papers 0002, University of Peloponnese, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
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(explanations, 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.)

  1. Papaioannou, Elias & Siourounis, Gregorios, 2008. "Economic and Social Factors Driving the Third Wave of Democratization," CEPR Discussion Papers 6986, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  2. Danne, Christian, 2009. "Commitment devices, opportunity windows, and institution building in Central Asia," MPRA Paper 16597, University Library of Munich, Germany. [Downloadable!]
  3. Ansgar Belke & Ingo Bordon & Inna Melnykovska & Rainer Schweickert, 2009. "Prospective Membership and Institutional Change in Transition Countries," Kiel Working Papers 1562, Kiel Institute for the World Economy. [Downloadable!]
  4. Ansgar Belke & Ingo Bordon & Inna Melnykovska & Rainer Schweickert, 2009. "This paper quantifies the impact of incentives related to potential membership on institutional change as measured by the World Bank Governance Indicators (WBGI). Based on a panel of 25 transition cou," Ruhr Economic Papers 0131, Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Universität Dortmund, Universität Duisburg-Essen. [Downloadable!]
  5. Thorsten Drautzburg & Inna Melnykovska & Rainer Schweickert, 2008. "Which Membership Matters? External vs. Internal Determinants of Institutional Change in Transition Countries," Kiel Working Papers 1421, Kiel Institute for the World Economy. [Downloadable!]
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