Leader Value Added: Assessing the Growth Contribution of Individual National Leaders / William Easterly, Steven Pennings.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Easterly, William.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Pennings, Steven.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w27153.

NBER working paper series no. w27153

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2020.

Summary:

Previous literature suggests that leaders matter for growth in general. This paper asks which leaders matter and develops a methodology to estimate the growth contribution of individual leaders and calculate its precision. The findings show that few leaders have statistically significant contributions; it is difficult to know who is good for growth and who is not. The paper also finds that the most intuitive estimate of a leader's contribution--the average growth rate during tenure--is largely useless for measuring his or her true contribution. Consequently, many leaders with statistically significant growth effects are surprises. Moreover, leaders in non-democratic countries are no more likely to be statistically significant than leaders in democratic ones.

Notes:

Print version record

May 2020.