full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Yasheng Huang: Does democracy stifle economic growth?

Unscramble the Blue Letters


For each of these successful authoritarian governments in East Asia, there's a matched failure. Korea succeeded, North Korea didn't. Taiwan succeeded, China under Mao Zedong didn't. Burma didn't succeed. The Philippines didn't succeed. If you look at the statistical evidence worldwide, there's really no support for the idea that authoritarian gnertnmvoes hold a systematic edge over democracies in terms of economic growth. So the East Asian model has this massive selection bias — it is known as sictnleeg on a dependent variable, something we always tell our students to aivod.

So exactly why did China grow so much faster? I will take you to the Cultural Revolution, when China went mad, and compare that country's performance with India under Indira gdhnai. The question there is: Which country did better, China or iinda? China was during the Cultural Revolution. It turns out even during the Cultural Revolution, China out-perfomed India in terms of GDP growth by an average of about 2.2 percent every year in terms of per ctpiaa GDP. So that's when China was mad. The whole country went mad. It must mean that the country had something so aavngeoutads to itself in temrs of economic gtrowh to overcome the negative effects of the Cultural rvieooutln. The agavtadne the country had was human capital — nothing else but hmaun capital.

Open Cloze


For each of these successful authoritarian governments in East Asia, there's a matched failure. Korea succeeded, North Korea didn't. Taiwan succeeded, China under Mao Zedong didn't. Burma didn't succeed. The Philippines didn't succeed. If you look at the statistical evidence worldwide, there's really no support for the idea that authoritarian ___________ hold a systematic edge over democracies in terms of economic growth. So the East Asian model has this massive selection bias — it is known as _________ on a dependent variable, something we always tell our students to _____.

So exactly why did China grow so much faster? I will take you to the Cultural Revolution, when China went mad, and compare that country's performance with India under Indira ______. The question there is: Which country did better, China or _____? China was during the Cultural Revolution. It turns out even during the Cultural Revolution, China out-perfomed India in terms of GDP growth by an average of about 2.2 percent every year in terms of per ______ GDP. So that's when China was mad. The whole country went mad. It must mean that the country had something so ____________ to itself in _____ of economic ______ to overcome the negative effects of the Cultural __________. The _________ the country had was human capital — nothing else but _____ capital.

Solution


  1. selecting
  2. human
  3. india
  4. terms
  5. advantage
  6. capita
  7. growth
  8. governments
  9. avoid
  10. gandhi
  11. advantageous
  12. revolution

Original Text


For each of these successful authoritarian governments in East Asia, there's a matched failure. Korea succeeded, North Korea didn't. Taiwan succeeded, China under Mao Zedong didn't. Burma didn't succeed. The Philippines didn't succeed. If you look at the statistical evidence worldwide, there's really no support for the idea that authoritarian governments hold a systematic edge over democracies in terms of economic growth. So the East Asian model has this massive selection bias — it is known as selecting on a dependent variable, something we always tell our students to avoid.

So exactly why did China grow so much faster? I will take you to the Cultural Revolution, when China went mad, and compare that country's performance with India under Indira Gandhi. The question there is: Which country did better, China or India? China was during the Cultural Revolution. It turns out even during the Cultural Revolution, China out-perfomed India in terms of GDP growth by an average of about 2.2 percent every year in terms of per capita GDP. So that's when China was mad. The whole country went mad. It must mean that the country had something so advantageous to itself in terms of economic growth to overcome the negative effects of the Cultural Revolution. The advantage the country had was human capital — nothing else but human capital.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
economic growth 19
capita gdp 5
political reforms 5
life expectancy 4
strong government 3
longer system 3
east asian 3
authoritarian governments 3
cultural revolution 3
human capital 3
indian women 3
political system 3
gdp growth 2
compare india 2
asian model 2
indira gandhi 2
huge advantage 2
garment factories 2
overtake china 2
explain change 2
fixed effect 2
dynamic perspective 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
east asian model 2

Important Words


  1. advantage
  2. advantageous
  3. asia
  4. asian
  5. authoritarian
  6. average
  7. avoid
  8. bias
  9. burma
  10. capita
  11. capital
  12. china
  13. compare
  14. country
  15. cultural
  16. democracies
  17. dependent
  18. east
  19. economic
  20. edge
  21. effects
  22. evidence
  23. failure
  24. faster
  25. gandhi
  26. gdp
  27. governments
  28. grow
  29. growth
  30. hold
  31. human
  32. idea
  33. india
  34. indira
  35. korea
  36. mad
  37. mao
  38. massive
  39. matched
  40. model
  41. negative
  42. north
  43. overcome
  44. percent
  45. performance
  46. philippines
  47. question
  48. revolution
  49. selecting
  50. selection
  51. statistical
  52. students
  53. succeed
  54. succeeded
  55. successful
  56. support
  57. systematic
  58. taiwan
  59. terms
  60. turns
  61. variable
  62. worldwide
  63. year
  64. zedong