IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/4173.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Political Instability and Economic Growth

Author

Listed:
  • Alberto Alesina
  • Sule Ozler
  • Nouriel Roubini
  • Phillip Swagel

Abstract

This paper investigates the relationship between political instability and per capita GDP growth in a sample of 113 countries for the period 1950-1982. We define ?political instability? as the propensity of a government collapse, and we estimate a model in which political instability and economic growth are jointly determined. The main result of this paper is that in countries and time periods with a high propensity of government collapse, growth is significantly lower than otherwise. This effect remains strong when we restrict our definition of ?government change? to cases of substantial changes of the government.

Suggested Citation

  • Alberto Alesina & Sule Ozler & Nouriel Roubini & Phillip Swagel, 1992. "Political Instability and Economic Growth," NBER Working Papers 4173, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:4173
    Note: EFG IFM ITI
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w4173.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alberto Alesina & Dani Rodrik, 1994. "Distributive Politics and Economic Growth," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(2), pages 465-490.
    2. Robert J. Barro, 1991. "A Cross-Country Study of Growth, Saving, and Government," NBER Chapters, in: National Saving and Economic Performance, pages 271-304, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Alberto Alesina, 1987. "A Positive Theory of Fiscal Deficits and Government Debt in a Democracy," UCLA Economics Working Papers 435, UCLA Department of Economics.
    4. Nouriel Roubini & Jeffrey Sachs, 1988. "Political and Economic Determinants of Budget Deficits in the IndustrialDemocracies," NBER Working Papers 2682, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Erich Weede, 1983. "The Impact of Democracy on Economic Growth: Some Evidence from Cross‐National Analysis," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(1), pages 21-39, August.
    6. Fair, Ray C, 1978. "The Effect of Economic Events on Votes for President," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 60(2), pages 159-173, May.
    7. Dick, G William, 1974. "Authoritarian versus Nonauthoritarian Approaches to Economic Development," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(4), pages 817-827, July/Aug..
    8. Edwards, Sebastian & Tabellini, Guido, 1991. "Explaining fiscal policies and inflation in developing countries," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 10(1, Supple), pages 16-48, March.
    9. Robert J. Barro, 1991. "Economic Growth in a Cross Section of Countries," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(2), pages 407-443.
    10. Terrones, M., 1990. "Influence Activities and Economic Growth," University of Western Ontario, Departmental Research Report Series 9006, University of Western Ontario, Department of Economics.
    11. Tabellini, Guido & Alesina, Alberto, 1990. "Voting on the Budget Deficit," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(1), pages 37-49, March.
    12. Heckman, James J, 1978. "Dummy Endogenous Variables in a Simultaneous Equation System," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(4), pages 931-959, July.
    13. Roubini, Nouriel, 1991. "Economic and political determinants of budget deficits in developing countries," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 10(1, Supple), pages 49-72, March.
    14. Cukierman, Alex & Edwards, Sebastian & Tabellini, Guido, 1992. "Seigniorage and Political Instability," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(3), pages 537-555, June.
    15. Alesina, Alberto & Londregan, John & Rosenthal, Howard, 1993. "A Model of the Political Economy of the United States," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 87(1), pages 12-33, March.
    16. Rodrik, Dani, 1991. "Policy uncertainty and private investment in developing countries," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 229-242, October.
    17. Kevin M. Murphy & Andrei Shleifer & Robert W. Vishny, 1991. "The Allocation of Talent: Implications for Growth," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(2), pages 503-530.
    18. Amemiya, Takeshi, 1978. "The Estimation of a Simultaneous Equation Generalized Probit Model," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(5), pages 1193-1205, September.
    19. Alesina, Alberto & Tabellini, Guido, 1989. "External debt, capital flight and political risk," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(3-4), pages 199-220, November.
    20. Kormendi, Roger C. & Meguire, Philip G., 1985. "Macroeconomic determinants of growth: Cross-country evidence," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 141-163, September.
    21. Nouriel Roubini & Jeffrey Sachs, 1989. "Government Spending and Budget Deficits in the Industrial Economies," NBER Working Papers 2919, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    22. Sule Ozler & Guido Tabellini, 1991. "External Debt and Political Instability," NBER Working Papers 3772, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    23. Robert Summers & Alan Heston, 1988. "A New Set Of International Comparisons Of Real Product And Price Levels Estimates For 130 Countries, 1950–1985," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 34(1), pages 1-25, March.
    24. Roubini, N. & Sala-I-Martin, X., 1991. "Financial development , the Trade Regime and Economic Growth," Papers 646, Yale - Economic Growth Center.
    25. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 1994. "Is Inequality Harmful for Growth?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(3), pages 600-621, June.
    26. Newey, Whitney K., 1987. "Efficient estimation of limited dependent variable models with endogenous explanatory variables," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 36(3), pages 231-250, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 1999. "Political economics and macroeconomic policy," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 22, pages 1397-1482, Elsevier.
    2. Campos, Nauro F. & Nugent, Jeffrey B., 2002. "Who is afraid of political instability?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(1), pages 157-172, February.
    3. Fabrizio Carmignani, 2001. "Theory and Evidence on the Political Economy of Growth," Working Papers 33, University of Milano-Bicocca, Department of Economics, revised Jan 2001.
    4. Johannes Fedderke, 2001. "Growth and institutions," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 13(6), pages 645-670.
    5. Demir, Firat, 2006. "Volatility of short term capital flows and socio-political instability in Argentina, Mexico and Turkey," MPRA Paper 1943, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. G. Bellettini, 1995. "Aggregate uncertainty, political instability and redistribution," Working Papers 213, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    7. Durlauf, Steven N. & Quah, Danny T., 1999. "The new empirics of economic growth," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 4, pages 235-308, Elsevier.
    8. Mohtadi, Hamid & Roe, Terry L., 2003. "Democracy, rent seeking, public spending and growth," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(3-4), pages 445-466, March.
    9. Gimenez, G. & Sanau, J., 2009. "Investment, Human Capital and Institutions: A Multi-equational Approach for the Study of Economic Growth, 1985-2000," Applied Econometrics and International Development, Euro-American Association of Economic Development, vol. 9(1).
    10. Roubini, Nouriel & Sala-i-Martin, Xavier, 1995. "A growth model of inflation, tax evasion, and financial repression," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 275-301, April.
    11. Darby, Julia & Li, Chol-Won & Muscatelli, V. Anton, 2004. "Political uncertainty, public expenditure and growth," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 153-179, March.
    12. Alesina, Alberto, 1992. "Political models of macroeconomic policy and fiscal reform," Policy Research Working Paper Series 970, The World Bank.
    13. Mohtadi, Hamid & Roe, Terry L., 1997. "Democracy, rent seeking, and growth: Is there a U curve?," Bulletins 7485, University of Minnesota, Economic Development Center.
    14. Agell, Jonas & Lindh, Thomas & Ohlsson, Henry, 1997. "Growth and the public sector: A critical review essay," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 33-52, February.
    15. Levine, Ross & Renelt, David, 1991. "Cross-country studies of growth and policy : methodological, conceptual, and statistical problems," Policy Research Working Paper Series 608, The World Bank.
    16. Helliwell, John F., 1994. "Empirical Linkages Between Democracy and Economic Growth," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 24(2), pages 225-248, April.
    17. Jannils Łukasz, 2021. "The concept of political instability in economic research," International Journal of Management and Economics, Warsaw School of Economics, Collegium of World Economy, vol. 57(3), pages 268-284, September.
    18. Bellettini, Giorgio, 1998. "Aggregate uncertainty, political instability and income redistribution," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 19-33, February.
    19. Alesina, Alberto & Perotti, Roberto, 1996. "Income distribution, political instability, and investment," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(6), pages 1203-1228, June.
    20. Gregorio Jiménez & Jaime Sanaú, 2007. "The Desirability of Multi-equational Approaches for the Study of Economic Growth. An Empirical Evidence," Working Papers 02/07, Instituto Universitario de Análisis Económico y Social.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:4173. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.