Dipartimento di Economia e Crenos
Mercoledi 8 giugno 2011 alle ore 12 nell’aula magna della Facoltà di Economia in Viale Sant’Ignazio 74, il Prof. Stephen Parente, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign terrà un seminario su:
Democracy as a Middle Ground: A Unified Theory of Development and Political Regimes
A large literature documents that autocratic regimes have not, on average, outperformed democratic regimes, although they do display greater variance in economic performance. At the same time, no long-lived autocracy currently is rich whereas every long-lived democracy is. This paper puts forth a theory to account for these observations. The theory rests on the idea that autocratic leaders are heterogeneous in their preferences and the idea that special interest groups can successfully lobby a democratic regime for policies that delay industrialization. We show that an elite landed class chooses to democratize society only after the economy has accumulated enough wealth.
University of Cagliari