With the goal of freeing the world from poverty, some Western authorities have consistently insisted on promoting democracy in totalitarian states in the past decades. Seeing that democratic political system are stably established more and more in many countries, an opportunity arises to determine the effects of democracy on economic development. Taking advantage of this fact, this paper attempts to explore whether or not democracy contributes largely to prosperity of a nation. The conclusion is that, whereas democracy acts as a catalyst that influences prosperity in many already well-to-do nations, democracy per se is not significantly beneficial to low initial income countries. Another interesting point found in this study is that the Western colonialism tends to be one of the most significant factors in explaining poor economic development in many regions of the world today.
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Paper provided by University of Vienna, Department of Economics in its series Vienna Economics Papers with number
0911.
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.:
Elias Papaioannou & Gregorios Siourounis, 2008.
"Democratization and Growth,"
Working Papers
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[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)
Other versions:
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)
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!]