Democracy And Growth: Is The Effect Non-Linear?

The paper provides a survey of theoretical and empirical literature on non-linear impact of democracy on economic growth. First, it looks at two main approaches to the nonlinearity: the U-shape and the inverse U-shape. Then it proceeds by looking at the specifics of hybrid regimes and tries to understand, whether the results could be driven by specific features of some semi-democracies and semi-autocracies. Finally, it discusses the opportunity to test the growth-and-democracy nexus using subnational data, and considers the first results of this approach.