Investment without democracy: Ruling-party institutionalization and credible commitment in autocracies

What explains private investment in autocracies, where institutions that discourage expropriation in democracies are absent? We argue that institutionalized ruling parties allow autocrats to make credible commitments to investors. Such parties promote investment by solving collective-action problems among a designated group, who invest with the expectation that the autocrat will not attempt their expropriation. We derive conditions under which autocrats want to create such parties, and we predict that private investment and governance will be stronger in their presence. We illustrate the model by examining the institutionalization of the Chinese Communist Party.     

Defining governance matters: A factor analytic assessment of governance institutions

This paper produces a new set of governance indices that enable estimation of the marginal economic benefits of particular categories of governance. The indices are constructed using a factor model, estimated on forty perceptions-based governance variables from eleven data sources. In contrast to previous research, a unified statistical framework is used to determine the number of governance indices to create, the conceptual content of each index, and the relative importance each has in accounting for the observable data. The four indices are labeled market infrastructure, downside governance risk, order, and civil liberties. Confidence intervals are calculated for each country, for each index to aid in the comparison of scores. As an application, the indices are used as explanatory variables in cross-country income regressions. Instrumental variables estimates show that market infrastructure and civil liberties both exert statistically and economically significant effects on per capita income, controlling for geography (malaria risk) and international trade.     

How foreign direct investment promote institutional quality: Evidence from Vietnam

Using a unique dataset from a provincial competitiveness survey and the rising foreign direct investment (FDI) from joining the World Trade Organization (WTO), I find that variations in economic institutions across the provinces of Vietnam are associated with the flow of foreign investment. To overcome endogeneity problems, I use the minimum distance from each province to a main economic centre as an instrument for foreign investment inflows. The instrumental variable approach shows that the direction of influence is from greater foreign investment to better institutions. These results hold after controlling for various additional covariates, and are also robust to various alternative measures of institutions. I also find that foreign direct investment has greater short-term impacts on institutional quality in the northern provinces.     

On the distribution of education and democracy

This paper empirically analyzes the influence of education on democracy by controlling for unobservable heterogeneity and by taking into account the persistency of some of the variables. The most novel finding is that an increase in the education attained by the majority of the population is what matters for the implementation and sustainability of democracy, rather than the average years of schooling. We show this result is robust to issues pertaining omitted variables, outliers, sample selection, or a narrow definition of the variables used to measure democracy.     

Guard labor

We explore the economic importance of the private and public exercise of power in the execution of contracts and defense of property rights. We define power and represent it in a model of growth in a modern capitalist economy, borrowing themes from the classical economists (unproductive labor, profit-driven investment), Marx (the labor disciplining effect of unemployment), and the contemporary theory of incomplete contracts (the role of monitoring and enforcement rents). We use this model to identify the resources devoted to the exercise of power, which we term guard labor as we measure these in labor units. Data from the United States indicate a significant increase in its extent in the U.S. over the period 1890 to the present. Cross-national comparisons show a significant statistical association between income inequality and the fraction of the labor force that is constituted by guard labor, as well as with measures of political legitimacy (inversely) and political conflict. Some observations on the welfare implications of guard labor conclude the paper.     

Short and long run democracy diffusion

Does democracy diffuse across borders? If so, how long does it take? Can diffusion cause path dependence, such that if a region is initially democratic (or autocratic), it becomes increasingly so? In this paper I estimate short and long run regional democratic diffusion and account for feedback to and from other countries within the region. Although it is difficult to establish causality, I estimate that when regional democracy in year (t-1) increases, domestic democracy receives or “catches” 40–42% of the increase in the next 5 years, 55–61% in 10 years, and 68–85% in the long run prior to accounting for feedback. When I account for feedback, the average region converges to a unique long-run democracy level regardless of how democratic it is initially. I also provide region-specific and contiguous neighbor estimates, use the model to explain democratization waves, and estimate the alternative V-DEM dataset. In the V-DEM data, democracy diffuses much faster, although the long-run diffusion effects are comparable.     

Political regime type and variation in economic growth rates

Research about the effects of regime type on economic growth rates did not establish any robust differences in average growth rates between democracies and autocracies. Here, it is suggested that we may have asked the wrong question. There still might be a difference in variances. Democracy implies similar constraints on rulers and thereby might lead to quite similar economic performances. Among autocracies, however, constitutional and institutional constraints are likely to be weak and variable. Moreover, personal inclinations of autocrats might matter much more than personality differences between democratic rulers. Data from the 1960–87 period supply some evidence that there is indeed greater variation in growth rates among autocracies than among democracies.     

On the release of information by governments: Causes and consequences

The release of economic and social data by a government provides many benefits to its citizens on a number of different levels. Information has value in itself (for example, to facilitate a more efficient allocation of resources), but it could also perhaps be seen as a signal of the degree of political and institutional transparency. In order to evaluate the potential association between the release of information and the institutional and economic circumstances across countries, a new index is developed that has extensive coverage across countries (175) and time (1960–2000), and is based on the quantity of reported socio-economic data contained in the World Development Indicators and the International Finance Statistics databases. Using a series of Granger-causality regressions, the release of information by governments is shown to have a significant positive effect on the quality of the bureaucracy in the short run and, in the longer term, a significant effect on investment and financial sector development. In terms of reverse causality, the evidence shows that the degree of constraints on the executive branch of government and education both have a positive effect on the quantity of data released by governments.     

Property rights imperfections and asset allocation: Co-ownership in Bulgaria

This paper analyzes how imperfections of property rights affect households’ allocation of assets using micro-survey data from Bulgaria. Co-ownership of assets is widespread in many countries due to inheritance. Central and Eastern Europe offers an interesting natural experiment to assess the effects of this type of property rights imperfection because of the asset restitution process in the 1990s. In Bulgaria, where co-ownership is very prominent and land is strongly fragmented, the land reform and inheritance legislation allows identifying the impact of co-ownership by taking advantage of a discontinuity created by a minimum plot size law. We find that land in co-ownership is more likely to be used by less efficient farm organizations or to be left abandoned, and that it is related to significant welfare losses. The paper hence provides evidence of sub-optimal land allocation following a privatization that established formal but imperfect property rights.     

Finance–Growth Nexus and the P‐bias: Evidence from OECD Countries

Recent studies provide new empirical evidence confirming that financial development is linked to economic growth in OECD countries. Using new dynamic panel regression techniques, these appraisals indicate that within the group of high‐income countries stock market size as a measure of financial advancement contributes significantly to overall economic activity. Applying the same advanced techniques, this paper questions this conclusion by showing that the findings of these studies seem to be not only not robust with respect to adding new observations but also likely to be plagued by a severe price bias which belittles the information content of the used financial indicator (stock market capitalization). We provide evidence that anticipative price effects (i.e. expectations of future growth, reflected in current stock prices) may be driving the statistical relationship between stock market activities and economic growth in high‐income countries to a much larger extent than recent analyses of the finance– growth link in OECD countries suggest .     

Did colonization matter for growth?: An empirical exploration into the historical causes of Africa's underdevelopment

We investigate the impact of 20th-century European colonization on growth. We find that colonial heritage, as measured by the identity of the metropolitan ruler and by the degree of economic penetration, matters for the heterogeneity of growth performances in Africa. Colonial indicators are correlated with economic and sociopolitical variables that are commonly employed to explain growth and there are growth gains from decolonization. Colonial indicators also add significant explanatory power to worldwide growth regressions and are correlated with the Sub-Saharan Africa and the Latin America dummies.     

Endogenous institutional change after independence

Independence from colonial rule was a key event for both political and economic reasons. We argue that newly independent countries often inherited sub-optimal institutional arrangements, which the new regimes reacted to in very different ways. We present a model of endogenous changes in property rights institutions where an autocratic post-colonial elite faces a basic trade-off between stronger property rights, which increases the dividends from the modern sector, and weaker property rights that increases the elite's ability to appropriate resource rents. The model predicts that revenue-maximizing regimes in control of an abundance of resource rents and with insignificant interests in the modern sector will rationally install weak institutions of private property, a prediction which we argue is well in line with the experience of several developing countries.     

Financial constraints and investment: assessing the impact of a World Bank credit program on small and medium enterprises in Sri Lanka

Abstract.  This paper examines the investment behaviour of a sample of small, credit-constrained firms in Sri Lanka. Using a unique panel data set, we analyze and compare the activities of two groups of small firms distinguished by their differential access to financing; one group consists of firms with subsidized loans from the World Bank, while the other group consists of firms without such subsidies. The paper shows that the program led to higher levels of investment for financially constrained firms. However, the evidence is inconclusive on whether the program improved economic efficiency.     

Political instability: Effects on financial development, roots in the severity of economic inequality

We here bring forward strong evidence that political instability impedes financial development, with its variation a primary determinant of differences in financial development around the world. As such, it needs to be added to the short list of major determinants of financial development. First, structural conditions first postulated by Engerman and Sokoloff (2002) as generating long-term inequality are shown here to have strong empirical support as exogenous determinants of political instability. Second, that exogenously-determined political instability in turn holds back financial development, even when we control for factors prominent in the last decade’s cross-country studies of financial development. The findings indicate that inequality-perpetuating conditions that result in political instability and weak democracy are fundamental roadblocks for international organizations like the World Bank that seek to promote financial development. The evidence here includes country fixed effect regressions and an instrumental model inspired by Engerman and Sokoloff’s (2002) work, which to our knowledge has not yet been used in finance and which is consistent with current tests as valid instruments. Four conventional measures of national political instability – Alesina and Perotti’s (1996) well-known index of instability, a subsequent index derived from Banks’ (2005) work, and two indices of managerial perceptions of nation-by-nation political instability – persistently predict a wide range of national financial development outcomes. Political instability’s significance is time consistent in cross-sectional regressions back to the 1960s, the period when the key data becomes available, robust in both country fixed effects and instrumental variable regressions, and consistent across multiple measures of instability and of financial development. Overall, the results indicate the existence of an important channel running from structural inequality to political instability, principally in nondemocratic settings, and then to financial backwardness. The robust significance of that channel extends existing work demonstrating the importance of political economy explanations for financial development and financial backwardness. It should help to better understand which policies will work for financial development, because political instability has causes, cures, and effects quite distinct from those of many of the key institutions most studied in the past decade as explaining financial backwardness.     

Political democratization, economic liberalization, and growth volatility

This study empirically investigates the effects of political and economic liberalization on growth volatility using a difference-in-difference method for a sample of 158 countries over the 1970-2005 period. The results show that, when examined separately, economic liberalization leads to a significant reduction in volatility while democratization is not followed by a decrease in growth volatility. For countries that undertake only one liberalization, opening up the economy to international trade reduces volatility in growth; becoming a democracy, on the other hand, seems to increase macroeconomic instability. For countries that implement both political and economic liberalizations, no statistically significant effect on volatility is detected. These results serve to provide additional support for the policy recommendation that developing countries should liberalize their economy first and then consider political liberalization.     

Economic freedom, civil liberties, political rights and growth: a causality analysis

Several empirical studies have established the relationship between economic freedom, civil liberties and political rights, and economic growth. Nevertheless, few studies analyze the directions of causality. This paper studies the causality relations between the institutional dimensions mentioned above and economic growth, as well as the interrelations between them, using the Granger methodology with panel data for 187 countries and five-yearly observations for the period 1976–2000. In addition, the relations between these freedoms and investment in physical and human capital are examined, to be able to isolate the direct and indirect effects on growth. The authors acknowledge the suggestions made by the editor and the reviewers, which have improved this work with respect to its initial version.     

The determinants of corruption in transition economies

This paper examines the determinants of corruption in transition economies. We found that the progress of structural reform, comprising marketization, rule of law, and democratization had a crucial impact on the extent of corruption control in former socialist countries.     

Are financial development and corruption control substitutes in promoting growth?

While financial development and corruption control have been studied extensively, their interaction has not. We develop a simple model in which low corruption and financial development both facilitate the undertaking of productive projects, but act as substitutes in doing so. The substitutability arises because corruption raises the need for liquidity and thus makes financial improvements more potent; conversely, financial underdevelopment makes corruption more onerous and thus raises the gains from reducing it. We test this substitutability by predicting growth, of countries and industries, using measures of financial development, lack of corruption, and a key interaction term. Both approaches point to positive effects from improving either factor, as well as to a substitutability between them. The growth gain associated with moving from the 25th to the 75th percentile in one factor is 0.63–1.68 percentage points higher if the second factor is at the 25th percentile rather than the 75th. The results show robustness to different measures of corruption and financial development and do not appear to be driven by outliers, omitted variables, or other theories of growth and convergence.     

Political origins of financial structure

There is growing policy interest in the role of financial structure in promoting development. However, very little is known about how different financial structures emerge and evolve. In this paper we empirically assess the political origins of financial structure. Using difference–in difference estimation and annual data, we study the effects of democratization on financial structure in a sample of 96 countries covering the period 1970–2005. Democratization here corresponds to the event of becoming a democracy. We find that democratization leads to a more market-based financial system. Democratic change could also be incremental rather than a one off. To identify the effect of incremental democratic change on financial structure we estimate a separate model and find that democracy matters. We also find that countries with substantial democratic capital are more likely to have a market-based financial structure. Our main results are robust to a variety of controls, Arellano–Bond GMM estimation, alternative measures of democracy and financial structure, and across different samples.