跨國資料顯示：各國民主化程度與其所得間呈現高度之正相關現象。但是，本研究旨在證明：一旦考慮不同國家之特性與組內變異時，政治民主化對經濟成長之影響會立即消失。預期此一推論不會因計量方法、樣本與控制變數之不同而有所改變。此外，如果政治制度不能影響經濟成長，到底何種因素能影響成長？本研究初步結論認為除了文化、族群與國家地理環境外，最重要的因素還是教育。教育不但較政治更能影響成長，在某種程度上還能對政治民主化產生影響。
Cross country data reveal a strong and positive correlation between democracy and income. This project aims to show that this correlation is not robust to including fixed effects and exploiting the within-country variation over time. I expect that the lack of association is robust to different econometric techniques, to estimation in various different samples, and to the inclusion of different sets of covariates. However, if democracy does not cause growth, then what does? Other than time-invariant country characteristics such as geography, culture, and ethnicity, this proposal suggests a time-varying factor – education. Not only is education a more important variable in predicting economic growth than political institutions, but also the outcome of a democratic or autocratic regime is to some extent determined by education.
