The Personalist Penalty: Varieties of Autocracy and Economic Growth

Abstract

We explore the economic consequences of personalist rule, where power is concentrated in an individual or small elite. Working with a cross-country panel from 1960 to 2010, and building on the empirical strategy of Acemoglu, Naidu, Restrepo, and Robinson (2019), we compare the growth performance of personalist autocracies, institutionalized autocracies, and democracies. Consistent with prior research, authoritarian regimes of all types have lower average growth rates than democratic ones, but this ``autocratic penalty’’ is largely concentrated in personalist autocracies. Exploring mechanisms, we find that autocracies with highly concentrated power have significantly lower private investment, more domestic unrest and protest, and lower total factor productivity. Our results highlight the very different incentives facing leaders in authoritarian regimes with narrow and broad bases of power.