Economic Growth: Democracy vs. Autocracy

“What is clearer is that democracies produce less variable results: not as many great successes, but also fewer prolonged disasters. Since the bad outcomes tend to produce more damage than the good ones, less variable outcomes would be an attractive feature of democracies compared to autocracies, even if democracies on average did not produce greater economic growth. Comparisons between the effects of these different systems of government on economic growth are muddied by the fact that personal freedoms usually increase substantially under autocracies that have been growing at a fast pace.”