Democratization and Economic Growth in Emerging Market Economies

The globalization phenomenon has gained speed in various aspects especially since mid-1980s, this process in turn partially contributed to democratization of the many countries. This study researches the effect of democratization on economic growth in emerging markets over 2002-2015 period with panel cointegration test of Westerlund-Durbin-Hausman (2008) and panel causality test of Dumitrescu and Hurlin (2012). The results revealed a cointegrating relationship between economic growth and democratization, but the interaction between democratization and growth varies from country to country. However, no causality relationships were found between democratization and economic growth in the short run