Rain and the democratic window of opportunity
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.Download Info
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Paper provided by Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra in its series Economics Working Papers with number 1114.Length:
Date of creation: Oct 2008
Date of revision: Oct 2009
Handle: RePEc:upf:upfgen:1114
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Web page: http://www.econ.upf.edu/
Related research
Keywords: Democratization; transitory economic shocks;Other versions of this item:
- Markus Brückner & Antonio Ciccone, 2011. "Rain and the Democratic Window of Opportunity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 79(3), pages 923-947, 05.
- Brückner, Markus & Ciccone, Antonio, 2008. "Rain and the Democratic Window of Opportunity," CEPR Discussion Papers 6691, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
- Markus Brückner, 2010. "Rain and the Democratic Window of Opportunity," 2010 Meeting Papers 224, Society for Economic Dynamics.
- Markus Bruckner & Antonio Ciccone, 2010. "Rain and the Democratic Window of Opportunity," Working Papers 1010, BBVA Bank, Economic Research Department.
- Markus Brückner & Antonio Ciccone, 2009. "Rain and the Democratic Window of Opportunity," Working Papers 2009-38, FEDEA.
- O0 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - General
- P0 - Economic Systems - - General
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
- NEP-ALL-2008-10-28 (All new papers)
- NEP-DEV-2008-10-28 (Development)
- NEP-POL-2008-10-28 (Positive Political Economics)
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