With this reassurance, we can compare the rates of growth of democracies preceding
dictatorships with those of democracies following them and vice versa. The average rate of
growth during all the years of democracies preceding dictatorships is 4.49 percent (N=290)
and of dictatorships following democracies is 4.37 percent (N=425). Hence, transitions from
democracy to dictatorship do not affect the rate of growth. Growth during all the years of
dictatorships preceding democracies is higher, at the average of 4.74 percent (N=607), than
the average of 3.64 percent (N=371) during all the democratic years that follow. But since
the recovery from the crises accompanying transitions to democracy is slow and the
observations are right-hand censored, the conclusion that transitions to democracy slow
down growth would be erroneous. Just note that many democratic observations follow
transitions either from bureaucratic-authoritarian or communist dictatorships during the