Volume 10, Issue 36 (4-2010)                   refahj 2010, 10(36): 27-60 | Back to browse issues page

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Ghasemi V, Adibi Sede M, Azarbaiejani K, Tavakoli K. (2010). Democracy and Economic Growth: A Worldwide Quantitative Survey. refahj. 10(36), 27-60.
URL: http://refahj.uswr.ac.ir/article-1-926-en.html
Abstract:   (13308 Views)

  Objectives: Since the social capital issue and its role in the economic development have been presented, the dominant idea is an emphasis on the positive role of social capital. In this writing, it is demonstrated that there are different types of social capital and although it has a positive role on development process, a kind of that can be no suitable for development. The aim of this article is to provide an overview of the concept of social capital and to distinguish its different forms, focusing on their potential effects on economic development.

  Method: Research method in this writing is "library method" .Different researches are considered about the relation between social capital and economic development and at the end, it is concluded about the existence or non- existence of a relation.

  Findings: In this research we have concluded that since bonding social capital influences on a limited and special confidence, it causes some organizational disorder or factious .So its result is an undeveloped society.

  On the contrary, bridging social capital with expanding of confidence interval, creating social relations and people participation in voluntary associations helps economical development.

 

  Research Problem: Economic growth and development is a complicated process that falls into the domain of many disciplines in social sciences andhumanities. Therefore to study these fundamental aspects of economic growthsynthesizing in these fields is necessary. In this research using endogenousgrowth models and political literature, we present a model for political economyof growth. The main question that this study is going to answer is the relation

  between democracy and economic growth. There are some well knowndocuments that have studied the relationship between democracy and economicgrowth in the literature in this area. Because of ambiguous results of them, it isneeded to test the relationship by using new data and methods.

  Method: to test the relation between democracy and economic growth, using panel data of 62 countries in the period 1980-2000 in this paper we study theeffects of democracy on economic growth through fixed effects model. Tomeasure democracy index, we use a mixed variable which includes political andfreedom rights. Per capita GDP growth is used to measure economic growth rate.Stata8 and Eviews5 software are used to get econometrics results.

  Concluding remarks: Despite of a lot of studies that focus on the negative effects or inefficiency of democracy, we find the positive and significant effectsof democracy on economic growth.We also come to this conclusion that economic growth negatively is related tothe inflation, interest groups, and government consumption on the other hand itis positively related to the human capital, investment, population growth, femalelabor force, and active population.

  Conclusions: according to results, we conclude that any improvement in the democratic institutions is required to have significant economic growth. Also, tocatch higher economic growth, education enhancing, democratic institutions,reduction in government intervention in economy, investment and increasing in female labor force participation can be helpful.

  JEL-code: O40 O57 O41 Q20 Q30

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Received: 2013/01/19 | Published: 2010/04/15

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