Paper #1114

Títol:

Rain and the democratic window of opportunity

Autors:

Markus Brückner i Antonio Ciccone

Data:

Octubre 2008

Resum:

According to the economic approach to political transitions, transitory negative economic shocks can open a window of opportunity for democratic improvement. Testing the theory requires a source of transitory shocks to the aggregate economy. We use rainfall shocks in Sub-Saharan African countries and find that negative rainfall shocks are followed by significant improvement in democratic institutions. Instrumental variables estimates indicate that following a transitory negative income shock of 1 percent, democracy scores improve by 0.9 percentage points and the probability of a democratic transition increases by 1.3 percentage points.

Paraules clau:

Democratization, transitory economic shocks

Codis JEL:

O0, P0

Àrea de Recerca:

Macroeconomia i Economia Internacional

Publicat a:

Econometrica, 79 (3), 923-947, 2011

Descarregar el paper en format PDF