Growth and Democracy

In grad school I was very interested in the relationship between economic growth and democracy. I think this post from Corner Solution, has an excellent quote from the WSJ article:

"In some countries, like China, it could be easier to make changes," Mr. Cover says. "But that's the cost of democracy."

But some of my views on growth need to apparently need to change. I often thought Islamic lending laws provided a major impediment to growth. But this Marginal Revolution post suggests that Islam itself is not associated with lower growth than other religions. Maybe the answer can be found in this post over on Mahalanobis.

Islam's Sharia law severely limits the practice of charging or paying interest. But a new generation of Islamic banks have found ways to make products mimic the Western originals, from floating-rate infrastructure loans to Islam-compliant credit cards issued by Visa. The paperwork, however, is Islamic. "Risk," Mr. Mishari (* CEO of Bank Aljazira *) says with a smile, "has no religion."

Keywords: Growth, Interest Rates, ECO301, ECO305