Do Coup Leaders Matter? Leadership Change And Economic Growth In Politically Unstable Countries

The authors examine the impact of leadership change after a coup d'etat on economic growth. They consider successful coup attempts as this treatment group and use failed coup attempts as controls to condition on political instability. To take account of selection bias, they control for the determinants of coup success. This main finding is that leadership changes after a coup d'état have a positive effect on economic growth in the least developed countries, but have a negative effect in other developing countries.