Leader Value Added : Assessing the Growth Contribution of Individual National Leaders

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 contrib...

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Main Authors: Easterly, William, Pennings, Steven
Format: Working Paper
Language:English
Published: World Bank, Washington, DC 2020
Subjects:
Online Access:http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/787101587041484119/Leader-Value-Added-Assessing-the-Growth-Contribution-of-Individual-National-Leaders
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/33609
id okr-10986-33609
recordtype oai_dc
spelling okr-10986-336092022-09-20T00:12:38Z Leader Value Added : Assessing the Growth Contribution of Individual National Leaders Easterly, William Pennings, Steven NATIONAL LEADERS ECONOMIC GROWTH TEACHER VALUE-ADDED POLITICAL ECONOMY DEMOCRACY 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. 2020-04-16T20:02:12Z 2020-04-16T20:02:12Z 2020-04 Working Paper http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/787101587041484119/Leader-Value-Added-Assessing-the-Growth-Contribution-of-Individual-National-Leaders http://hdl.handle.net/10986/33609 English Policy Research Working Paper;No. 9215 CC BY 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo World Bank World Bank, Washington, DC Publications & Research Publications & Research :: Policy Research Working Paper
repository_type Digital Repository
institution_category Foreign Institution
institution Digital Repositories
building World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection World Bank
language English
topic NATIONAL LEADERS
ECONOMIC GROWTH
TEACHER VALUE-ADDED
POLITICAL ECONOMY
DEMOCRACY
spellingShingle NATIONAL LEADERS
ECONOMIC GROWTH
TEACHER VALUE-ADDED
POLITICAL ECONOMY
DEMOCRACY
Easterly, William
Pennings, Steven
Leader Value Added : Assessing the Growth Contribution of Individual National Leaders
relation Policy Research Working Paper;No. 9215
description 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.
format Working Paper
author Easterly, William
Pennings, Steven
author_facet Easterly, William
Pennings, Steven
author_sort Easterly, William
title Leader Value Added : Assessing the Growth Contribution of Individual National Leaders
title_short Leader Value Added : Assessing the Growth Contribution of Individual National Leaders
title_full Leader Value Added : Assessing the Growth Contribution of Individual National Leaders
title_fullStr Leader Value Added : Assessing the Growth Contribution of Individual National Leaders
title_full_unstemmed Leader Value Added : Assessing the Growth Contribution of Individual National Leaders
title_sort leader value added : assessing the growth contribution of individual national leaders
publisher World Bank, Washington, DC
publishDate 2020
url http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/787101587041484119/Leader-Value-Added-Assessing-the-Growth-Contribution-of-Individual-National-Leaders
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/33609
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