@article{af19c444ff0f4f4484f5edb072f616d7,
title = "Do leaders matter? National leadership and growth since world war II",
abstract = "Economic growth within countries varies sharply across decades. This paper examines one explanation for these sustained shifts in growth-changes in the national leader. We use deaths of leaders while in office as a source of exogenous variation in leadership, and ask whether these plausibly exogenous leadership transitions are associated with shifts in country growth rates. We find robust evidence that leaders matter for growth. The results suggest that the effects of individual leaders are strongest in autocratic settings where there are fewer constraints on a leader's power. Leaders also appear to affect policy outcomes, particularly monetary policy. The results suggest that individual leaders can play crucial roles in shaping the growth of nations.",
author = "Jones, {Benjamin F.} and Olken, {Benjamin A.}",
note = "Funding Information: * The authors would like to thank Daron Acemoglu, Alberto Alesina, Abhijit Banerjee, Robert Barro, Francesco Caselli, Esther Duflo, Amy Finkelstein, Edward Glaeser, Michael Gordin, Bryan Graham, Charles Jones, Lawrence Katz, Michael Kremer, Sendhil Mullainathan, Lant Pritchett, Xavier Sala-i-Martin, Scott Stern, and four anonymous referees for helpful comments. Sonia Chan, Sidney Henderson, Jessica Huang, Tabinda Khan, Ellen Kim, Patricia Reiter, Thomas Wang, and Jacqueline Yen all provided invaluable research assistance. The support of the George Shultz Fund for the data collection is gratefully acknowledged. Jones also acknowledges support from the Social Science Research Council{\textquoteright}s Program in Applied Economics, with funding provided by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and Olken acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.",
year = "2005",
month = aug,
doi = "10.1162/003355305774268165",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "120",
pages = "835--864",
journal = "Quarterly Journal of Economics",
issn = "0033-5533",
publisher = "Oxford University Press",
number = "3",
}
