Voice and growth: Was Churchill right?

• 成果类型: Editorial Material
• 署名作者: University of California System; University of California Davis
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0507
• 发表日期: 2003
• 页码: 315-350
• 关键词: economic-growth; industrial-revolution; DEMOCRACY; INEQUALITY; england

摘要

The debate over whether political democracy is the least bad regime, as Churchill, said, remains unresolved because history has been misread, and because statistical studies have chosen the wrong tests. This-address reinterprets five key experiences to show how the institutional channels linking voice and growth are evolving with the economy. Until, the early nineteenth century, the key,, institutional link was property-rights and contract enforcement. Since then, the human-investment channel has assumed. an ever-greater role. Elite rul growth by underinvesting in egalitarian human capital, especially primary schooling, relative to historical norms for successful economies.