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American Economic Review Vol. 104 No. 2 2014

Income and Democracy: Comment

Matteo Cervellati1; Florian Jung2; Uwe Sunde3; Thomas Vischer3

1 University of Bologna, Piazza Scaravilli 2, 40126 Bologna, Italy (e-mail: ) · 2 University of St. Gallen, Bodanstrasse 1 CH-9000 St. Gallen, Switzerland (e-mail: ) · 3 University of Munich, Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1, D-80539 Munich, Germany (e-mail: )

Abstract

Acemoglu et al. (2008) document that the correlation between income per capita and democracy disappears when including time and country fixed effects. While their results are robust for the full sample, we find evidence for significant but heterogeneous effects of income on democracy: negative for former colonies, but positive for non-colonies. Within the sample of colonies we detect heterogeneous effects related to colonial history and early institutions. The zero mean effect estimated by Acemoglu et al. (2008) is consistent with effects of opposite signs in the different subsamples. Our findings are robust to the use of alternative data and estimation techniques.

DOI
10.1257/aer.104.2.707
Volume
104
Issue
2
Pages
707-719
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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