23개 OECD국가에서 법･질서 확립이 경제성장에 미치는 영향에 대한 탐색적 연구

초록

Law and order should be a cornerstone of a government. It seems that people are willing to sacrifice their freedom and property for law and order, which might be an opportunity cost. Nobody underestimates the importance of law and order. It appears, however, problematic that law and order could contribute to economic growth and national competitiveness. Although many researchers have tried to prove such a proposition, they have had theoretical and empirical problems. Most of them pursue excessive generalization of the causal relation between the rule of law and economic growth by using analytic tools with advanced industrial democracies and less developed countries. These empirical studies, therefore, may not examine a proper causal relationship between the rule of law and economic growth. The research examines more accurate causal relations between two variables by analyzing 23 OECD countries with a very similar political economic system. That is, this study pursues the middle range of generalization. This study takes a sample of 23 OECD countries in the period of 1984-2007 except for Eastern European countries such as Czech, Poland, and Hungary which had been democratized since the breakdown of socialist countries in the early 1990s. The independence variable for this study, law and order, relied upon the PRS(Political Risk Services) Group's dataset. Two variables including economic growth rates and per capita GDP were considered for the dependent variables. The analytic tool for the research question is conducted within the framework of pooled cross-sectional and time series data analysis design. The result of this study finds that the rule of law doesn't have a significant effect upon economic growth. Such a result might be attributed to the character of advanced democratic institution. Legitimacy and legal authority, two-horse carriage of democratic institution, minimize the effects of law and order upon economy.

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