A talk on democracy and economic growth

A nice talk of the subject from MIT Sloan professor Yasheng Huang. In it, he mainly argues that 1) better infrastructure and stronger government are not necessary for higher economic growth; 2) human capital (literacy rate, life expectancy, gender equality, etc.) is way more important in explaining China's economic miracle; and 3) it is the change/improvement in democracy that explains economic growth, not the mere dichotomy of a totalitarian or a democratic nation.

In the comments section, many have pointed out that Prof. Huang is in fact defending the Chinese authoritarian regime by using biased data and pictures (like showing pics of Shanghai's skyscrapers and Mumbai's slums at the same time). Not at all. On the contrary, he has questioned the contribution of infrastructure to economic growth in the first place. By doing so, he actually challenged the view that a strong government is a necessary condition for high economic growth. Later, he tries to establish his own argument that human capital is a more important factor in explaining China's economic miracle. In the end, he again became clear that it is the change/improvement in democracy that explains economic growth, not the mere dichotomy of a totalitarian or a democratic nation. He believes India will eventually benefit from its democratic momentum, and for China, he is hoping for a faster and more radical political reform because that's the "right direction".

Of course, he may have done these arguments in much greater detail instead of some two-country one-way comparisons, but given that talk's limited time frame, I think he has done a fairly good job in explaining himself.