Economic Growth and Political Regimes

The absence of continuous regime type measures that focus on institutions rather than outcomes besets studies on whether democratic or authoritarian regimes grow faster. Additional shortcomings include the failure to consider development stages and the erroneous endogenous specification of regimes. Given panel data on 105 countries from 1960 to 1989, the effective party/constitutional framework measure does not correlate with growth or investment in the total sample. But considering development levels, some evidence indicates that discretion decreases growth in advanced areas, and, contrary to theory, inhibits investment in poorer countries. Also, single-party dictatorships have higher investment ratios but do not grow faster than party-less regimes.