How much do rights matter?

Do better political rights yield more economic development? By addressing the econometric challenges plaguing this question, we find support for a positive impact of rights on development. For a significant grouping of countries the association is nonlinear: the positive impact of rights is particularly strong at low rights levels; it is either absent or negative in an intermediate rights range; and returns to a moderate positive impact at high levels of rights. There is also evidence to suggest that transitions from autocratic political dispensations are associated with significant negative output shocks.