Robin Grier

The Effect of Religion on Economic Development: A Cross National Study of 63 Former Colonies

In this paper, the author presents a statistical test of the hypothesis that Protestantism is positively associated with economic growth. The author also investigates whether religion can help to explain why ex-Spanish and French colonies have significantly lower economic growth than ex-British colonies. The author finds that growth rate of Protestantism is significantly and positively related to real per-capita GDP levels. While the results imply that Protestantism plays an important level in development, its inclusion in the cross-country regressions do not close the gap between the ex-colonial states. Copyright 1997 by WWZ and Helbing & Lichtenhahn Verlag AG

Long Live Democracy: The Determinants of Political Instability in Latin America

Abstract We investigate the underlying causes of political instability in a panel of 18 Latin American countries from 1971–2000. We test whether regime type, regime durability, factionalism, income inequality, ethnic diversity, ethnic discrimination, regional spillover effects, urban growth and macroeconomic variables matter for instability. We find several important results: (1) democracy has a significant negative effect on instability that is robust to several alternative specifications; (2) factionalised political systems experience higher instability; (3) income inequality, ethnic fractionalisation, and urban growth have important nonlinear effects on instability; and (4) of the macroeconomic variables we study, only openness to trade has a significant negative effect on instability.

Political Cycles in Nontraditional Settings: Theory and Evidence from the Case of Mexico*

We create a rotating bandit model of executive turnover in politics with autocratic presidents, large and centralized governments, and limited reelection. The model is an extension of McGuire and Olsons 1996 work. We apply our model by studying the relationship between electoral cycles and economic growth and inflation uncertainty in Mexico, a country with a highly centralized and powerful government, no reelection, and until recently, little political competition. We find a significant postelection economic collapse but no preelection boom, which is contrary to the predictions of the traditional political business cycle model. We also find evidence that elections create, rather than resolve, inflation uncertainty, which contradicts the predictions of the rational partisan model. While our rotating bandit model is largely consistent with the results we find, more work is needed on the real effects of politics in the developing world.

Explaining the Rise of the Left in Latin America

Latin American politics has taken a left turn in the past decade, with an increasing number of chief executives hailing from left-of-center parties. We investigate the political and socioeconomic factors explaining political ideology of the chief executive in a sample of one hundred elections taking place between 1975 and 2007 in eighteen Latin American countries. We find that the commodity booms in agricultural, mining, and oil are positively and significantly related to the probability that a country will have a chief executive from a left-of-center political party. However, for oil exports, we observe that this effect holds only for Venezuela. We also show that past political discrimination and government crises are positively and significantly associated with a move to more left-wing chief executives. Openness to trade and having a president from the right in the previous presidential term negatively affects the probability of having a more liberal president, although the effect of trade openness disappears when the incumbent president is a conservative. We also find that when a government crisis occurs during a term with a president from the right, the probability of having a president from the left in the following term increases significantly.

Electoral Experience, Institutional Quality and Economic Development in Latin America

In a panel of 18 Latin American countries from 1900 to 2007, we test the degree to which institutions and geography affect country income. Using a new instrument, we find strong evidence that both institutions and geography are important determinants of country income. However, the penalty for economically unfavourable geography is much smaller than the potential benefits from good institutions. The coefficient estimates do not vary significantly when there are changes in the number of countries included in the analysis; the results for institutions are robust to the inclusion of country-fixed effects.

The (Non) Effect of Natural Resource Dependence on Capital Accumulation in Latin America

In a simultaneous model of human and physical capital accumulation for 18 Latin American countries from 1975 to 2004, we show that overall resource dependence is not significantly related to physical and human capital. Disaggregating the natural resource variable into subcategories, we find that petroleum export dependence is associated with higher physical capital and lower human capital, while agricultural export dependence is associated with lower levels of physical capital. All of these effects are quantitatively small, however, casting doubt on the idea that the region suffers from a resource curse in terms of capital accumulation.

Toothless Tigers? East Asian Economic Growth from 1960 to 1990

The author studies East Asian economic performance relative to the experience of a sample of rich, industrialized countries. On combining the coefficients from an augmented Solow model of growth for a sample of industrialized countries with the actual levels of factor accumulation in East Asia, no evidence is found that the region as a whole is over-achieving. Only Hong Kong and Taiwan can be characterized as over-achievers. Further, Indonesia and Thailand (when income growth is measured in per-worker terms) are actually significant under-achievers, growing slower than forecasted growth in every period.