Promoting economic growth and rising living standards

The key priorities of liberal regimes are promoting economic growth and rising living standards. The evidence on whether they perform better than other regimes is mainly negative. In the 21st century liberal, social democratic and corporatist regimes have recorded similar average growth rates. The liberal regimes recorded the fastest growth rates in household incomes, but this was largely due to Australia which avoided recession in the Global Financial Crisis. The proto-corporatist regimes, hit hardest by the Global Financial Crisis, have performed poorly in recent times. However, evidence for a longer period (1960-2019) indicates that proto-corporatist regimes achieved the highest growth rate, but this was almost certainly due to ‘catch-up’ in the earlier years; that is, starting from a comparatively low base.