The Effect of Political Regime and Freedom on Economic Growth

Abstract

Do political regime and freedom have a significant effect on economic growth? This paper tries to maintain differences in three political regimes viz. autocracies, bureaucracies and democracies and examines whether these regimes have different features overall and within specific continents in terms of effecting economic growth. Besides this paper study the effect of freedom status of a country (which is well associated with the political regime) on economic growth so as to accomplish a comparison of the results. The study covers 57 countries over 11 years, 1990-2000. The results suggest that the political regime and freedom have highly significant effect on economic growth with unique results for each continent.

Keywords: economic growth, political regime, freedom, democracy, bureaucracy, autocracy

JEL Classification: A11, C10, C33, C23, O47, O50, P16