Record Details

Institutional quality and the wealth of autocrats

European Journal of Government and Economics

View Archive Info
 
 
Field Value
 
Title Institutional quality and the wealth of autocrats
 
Creator Boudreaux, Christopher J
Holcombe, Randall
 
Subject Institutional Quality; Wealth; Autocrats
P51; O50; H11
 
Description One frequently given explanation for why autocrats maintain corrupt and inefficient institutions is that the autocrats benefit personally even though the citizens of their countries are worse off. The empirical evidence does not support this hypothesis. Autocrats in countries with low-quality institutions do tend to be wealthy, but typically, they were wealthy before they assumed power. A plausible explanation, consistent with the data, is that wealthy individuals in countries with inefficient and corrupt institutions face the threat of having their wealth appropriated by government, so have the incentive to use some of their wealth to seek political power to protect the rest of their wealth from confiscation. While autocrats may use government institutions to increase their wealth, autocrats in countries with low-quality institutions tend to be wealthy when they assume power, because wealthy individuals have the incentive to use their wealth to acquire political power to protect themselves from a potentially predatory government.
 
Publisher Europa Grande
 
Contributor —
 
Date 2017-12-31
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Peer-reviewed Article
 
Format application/pdf
 
Identifier http://www.ejge.org/index.php/ejge/article/view/92
 
Source European Journal of Government and Economics; Vol 6, No 2 (2017); 106-125
2254-7088
 
Language eng
 
Relation http://www.ejge.org/index.php/ejge/article/view/92/73
 
Rights Copyright (c) 2017 Christopher J. Boudreaux; Randall Holcombe
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0