Democracy and Reforms

27 Pages Posted: 20 Apr 2016

See all articles by Mohammad Amin

Mohammad Amin

World Bank - Enterprise Analysis Unit

Simeon Djankov

London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE); Peterson Institute for International Economics

Multiple version iconThere are 3 versions of this paper

Date Written: February 1, 2009

Abstract

The authors use a sample of 147 countries to investigate the link between democracy and reforms. Democracy may be conducive to reforms, because politicians have the incentive to embrace growth-enhancing reforms to win elections. By contrast, authoritarian regimes do not have to worry as much about public opinion and may undertake reforms that are painful in the short run but bring future prosperity. This paper tests these hypotheses, using data on micro-economic reforms from the World Bank's Doing Business database. These data do not suffer the endogeneity issues associated with other datasets on changes in economic institutions. The results provide robust support for the claim that democracy is good for growth-enhancing reforms.

Keywords: Parliamentary Government, Legal Products, Labor Policies, Public Sector Corruption & Anticorruption Measures, Emerging Markets

Suggested Citation

Amin, Mohammad and Djankov, Simeon, Democracy and Reforms (February 1, 2009). World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 4835, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1344720

Mohammad Amin

World Bank - Enterprise Analysis Unit ( email )

2121 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20433
United States

Simeon Djankov

London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE) ( email )

Houghton Street
London, WC2A 2AE
United Kingdom

Peterson Institute for International Economics ( email )

1750 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20036
United States

Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?

Paper statistics

Downloads
173
Abstract Views
1,788
Rank
190,037
PlumX Metrics