Democracy and Development: The Devil in the Details
这篇论文回顾了利用国内差异研究民主是否促进经济发展的最新成果，发现答案总体是肯定的，但取决于民主改革的具体细节，如经济与政治改革的顺序、政府形式以及预期与实际改革的影响。
Does democracy promote economic development? This paper reviews recent attempts to address this question that exploited within-country variation. It shows that the answer is largely positive, but also depends on the details of democratic reforms. First, the sequence of economic vs political reforms matters: countries liberalizing their economy before extending political rights do better. Second, different forms of democratic government lead to different economic policies, and this might explain why presidential democracy leads to faster growth than parliamentary democracy. Third, it is important to distinguish between expected and actual political reforms. Taking expectations of regime change into account helps identify a stronger growth effect of democracy.