Spillovers of Institutional Change in Africa
研究了非洲国家政治自由改善的决定因素，发现经济开放和邻国（尤其是民族语言相似国家）的改善会显著提升本国政治自由改善的概率，且邻国改善会使本国概率增加20.1%。
While previous research has looked at the determinants of the quality of institutions, not much research has been done that looks at the determinants of institutional change. This paper examines what determines the probability of an improvement in political freedoms. Several path-dependent variables, such as the history of political freedom, are clearly influential. In addition to that, economic openness and improvements in ethnolinguistically similar neighbouring countries turn out to significantly influence the probability of improvement. In Africa, an improvement of political freedom is associated with a 20.1% increase in the probability of improvement in neighbouring countries, keeping everything else constant. This result is robust to the inclusion of different variables, as well as different estimation techniques.