Do Citizens Matter for Economic Growth?-Evidence from Panel Data

In this paper, we examine the role of civic engagement in economic growth by using panel data of 118 countries from 1990 to 2010. We measure civic engagement by the civic activism index of the Indices of Social Development data. We use pooled OLS and panel fixed and random effects models to examine the impact. Our analyses strongly support the positive and significant contribution of civic engagement on economic growth. Our results show that civic activism has significant positive impacts on the political institution based polity2 index, thus lending support in favour of the view that Citizens matter for democracy.