Democracy, Corruption and Income: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa

The objective of this paper is to investigate the effect that democracy and corruption have on income in sub-Saharan Africa. The results show that whether or not democracy has income effects depends on a particular indicator used. While property rights and political stability have had positive income effects rule of law and government effectiveness have shown negative impact on income over the period under consideration. Corruption has negative impact on income. The study concludes that policy reforms should target programs that seek to develop and build the capacities of judiciaries, legislatures, media and civil societies to help enforce rule of law and strengthen democratic institutions. For research, the findings imply that researchers should seriously take into account the selection of proxies when investigating the impact of democracy on income