On "The Politics of Property Rights" by Haber, Razo, and Maurer

Stephen Haber et al. explore economic growth in key sectors of the Mexican economy, 1876–1929, an era of political instability and (1914–17) civil war. The authors demonstrate that economic growth continued amidst political instability and offer an explanation for their conunterintuitive finding. Reviewing the evidence advanced by the authors, Robert Bates summarizes and comments on their argument, and applies it to “out of sample” data from Africa.