Paper #1114

Title:

Rain and the democratic window of opportunity

Authors:

Markus Brückner and Antonio Ciccone

Date:

October 2008 (Revised: October 2009)

Abstract:

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.

Keywords:

Democratization, transitory economic shocks

JEL codes:

O0, P0

Area of Research:

Macroeconomics and International Economics

Published in:

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

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