An Investigation of Democracy and Economic Growth Nexus: A Case Study for D-8 Countries

This study aims to investigate the potential threshold effects in the relationship between democracy and economic growth for the D-8 countries over the period 1996-2011. In this investigation we also introduce other variables including education expenditures, government consumption expenditures, agricultural raw materials exports, inflation rate and index of openness. In order to do this investigation, the paper uses the Panel Smooth Transition Regression (PSTR) model that is appropriate method for describing cross-country heterogeneity. Our results reject the linearity hypothesis, and estimates two regimes that give a threshold at democracy of -0.971. In the first regime, democracy, education expenditure and government consumption expenditure variables have a significantly positive impact on GDP and agricultural raw materials exports, inflation rate and index of openness variables have a significantly negative impact on GDP. At the second regime, democracy, education expenditure, agricultural raw materials exports and index of openness variables have a positive impact and government consumption expenditure and inflation rate variables have a negative impact on GDP. Though, the impact of democracy and education expenditure are increased and the impact of inflation rate dramatically declined and government consumption expenditure, agricultural raw materials exports and index of openness sign have changed between two regimes. Therefore, empirical results confirm the compatibility view.