IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/dkn/econwp/eco_2006_04.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Democracy and Economic Growth: A Meta-Analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Doucouliagos, H
  • Ulubasoglu, Mehmet

Abstract

Despite a sizeable theoretical and empirical literature, no firm conclusions have been drawn regarding the impact of political democracy on economic growth. This article challenges the consensus of an inconclusive relationship through a quantitative assessment of the democracy‐growth literature. It applies meta‐regression analysis to the population of 483 estimates derived from 84 studies on democracy and growth. Using traditional meta‐analysis estimators, the bootstrap, and Fixed and Random Effects meta‐regression models, it derives several robust conclusions. Taking all the available published evidence together, it concludes that democracy does not have a direct impact on economic growth. However, democracy has robust, significant, and positive indirect effects through higher human capital, lower inflation, lower political instability, and higher levels of economic freedom. Democracies may also be associated with larger governments and less free international trade. There also appear to be country‐ and region‐specific democracy‐growth effects. Overall, democracy's net effect on the economy does not seem to be detrimental.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Doucouliagos, H & Ulubasoglu, Mehmet, 2006. "Democracy and Economic Growth: A Meta-Analysis," Working Papers eco_2006_04, Deakin University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:dkn:econwp:eco_2006_04
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25193797
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:dkn:econwp:eco_2006_04. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Xueli Tang (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sedeaau.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.