Doug Henwood wrote:
> "Democracy and the Variability of Economic Performance"
>
> BY: HEITOR ALMEIDA
> New York University
> Stern School of Business, Finance
> DANIEL FERREIRA
> University of Chicago, Department of Economics
>
> Document: Available from the SSRN Electronic Paper Collection:
> http://papers.ssrn.com/paper.taf?abstract_id=303285
>
> Date: March 5, 2002
>
> Contact: HEITOR ALMEIDA
> Email: Mailto:halmeida at stern.nyu.edu
> Postal: New York University
> Stern School of Business, Finance
> Room 9-190
> 44 West 4th Street
> New York, NY 10012-1126 UNITED STATES
> Phone: 212-998-0279
> Fax: 212-995-4233
> Co-Auth: DANIEL FERREIRA
> Email: Mailto:dsferrei at midway.uchicago.edu
> Postal: University of Chicago, Department of Economics
> 1126 East 59th Street
> Chicago, IL 60637 UNITED STATES
>
> ABSTRACT:
> Sah (1991) conjectured that more centralized societies should
> have more volatile performances than less centralized ones. We
> show in this paper that this is true both for cross-country and
> within-country variability in growth rates. It is also true for
> some measures of policies. Finally, we show that both the best
> and worst performers in terms of growth rates are more likely to
> be autocracies. These empirical results are unaffected by many
> robustness and specification checks. We argue that the evidence
> in the paper is consistent with the theoretical implications in
> Sah and Stiglitz (1991) and Rodrik (1999). The greater stability
> of growth rates and policy measures among democratic countries
> adds to an existing list of desirable features of democracies.
> Our evidence also corroborates the common view that some
> autocratic countries had the most impressive growth experiences.
> However, since the worst experiences are also associated with
> autocratic countries, in an ex-ante sense autocracy is no
> prescription for growth.
>
> Keywords: Democracy, autocracy, growth, variability,
> fallibility, centralization of decision-making
--
Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu