TY  - JOUR
AU  - Alesina,Alberto
AU  - Ozler,Sule
AU  - Roubini,Nouriel
AU  - Swagel,Phillip
TI  - Political Instability and Economic Growth
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 4173
PY  - 1992
Y2  - September 1992
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w4173
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w4173.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Alberto F. Alesina
Department of Economics
Harvard University
Littauer Center 210
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617/495-8388
Fax: 617/495-7730
E-Mail: aalesina@harvard.edu

Sule Ozler
UCLA
E-Mail: ozler@econ.ucla.edu

Nouriel Roubini
Department of Economics, KMC 7-83
Stern School of Business, New York University
44 West 4th Street
New York, NY  10012
Tel: 212/998-0886
Fax: 212/995-4218
E-Mail: nroubini@stern.nyu.edu

Phillip Swagel
E-Mail: pswagel@umd.edu
AB  - This paper investigates the relationship between political instability and per capita GDP growth in a sample of 113 countries for the period 1950-1982. We define ?political instability? as the propensity of a government collapse, and we estimate a model in which political instability and economic growth are jointly determined. The main result of this paper is that in countries and time periods with a high propensity of government collapse, growth is significantly lower than otherwise. This effect remains strong when we restrict our definition of ?government change? to cases of substantial changes of the government.
ER  -