Mastering Panel Metrics: Causal Impact of Democracy on Growth

Abstract

We revisit the panel data analysis of Acemoglu et al. (forthcoming) on the relationship between democracy and economic growth using state-of-the-art econometric methods. We argue that panel data settings are high-dimensional, resulting in estimators to be biased to a degree that invalidates statistical inference. We remove these biases by using simple analytical and sample-splitting methods, and thereby restore valid statistical inference. We find that debiased fixed effects and Arellano-Bond estimators produce higher estimates of the long-run effect of democracy on growth, providing even stronger support for the key hypothesis of Acemoglu et al.