(2017) Ducoing Ruiz, Cristián; Torregrosa Hetland, Sara
Will democracy improve the distribution of economic welfare? Do dictatorships leave
long-run legacies behind? In this paper we explore four Ibero-American countries with some
common historical traits, but also different contexts: Spain, Portugal, Brazil, and Chile. The two
Iberian nations suffered long periods of autocratic regime in the 20th Century, while our south
American cases had relatively later and shorter dictatorships.
We intend to assess the extent to which democratization brought about improvements in
societal welfare, combining indicators of inequality and economic performance. We propose
the applicability of the concept of Inequality Extraction Ratio, initially suggested for ancient
societies but adapted by Milanovic (2013b) to the analysis of contemporary economies. Our
hypothesis is that democratizations, while probably not able to achieve reductions in inequality,
could have promoted decreases in relative extraction.