Political instability and economic growth: Evidence from two decades of transition in CEE

This paper examines the nexus between political instability and economic growth in 10 CEE countries in transition in the period 1990–2009. Our results support the contention that political instability defined as a propensity for government change had a negative impact on growth. On the other hand, there was no causality in the opposite direction. A sensitivity analysis based on the application of a few hundred different variants of the initial econometric model confirmed the abovementioned findings only in the case where major government changes were applied to the definition of political instability.