Publication: Leader Value Added: Assessing the Growth Contribution of Individual National Leaders
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2020-04
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2020-04-16
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Easterly, William
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Abstract
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.
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“Easterly, William; Pennings, Steven. 2020. Leader Value Added: Assessing the Growth Contribution of Individual National Leaders. Policy Research Working Paper;No. 9215. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/33609 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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