Previous empirical studies have found that the institutions and policies of democracies are generally more supportive of economic freedom than authoritarian political regimes. This paper employs a new dataset by Cheibub et al. (2010) to examine the impact of transitions to democracy on economic...

James Buchanan advocated the market mechanism for allocating resources because it is based on voluntary exchange. People engage in market transactions only when they believe they benefit from doing so. Buchanan depicted the political process the same way. People engage in collective activities...