Revolutions as structural breaks
The long-term economic and institutional consequences of the 1979 Iranian Revolution
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6420362 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Nuno Garoupa (0000-0001-6792-0918), Rok Spruk (0000-0002-7269-2339) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 36 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 273-301 |
| Publication date | 2025-06-04 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Constitutional Political Economy (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1572-9966 • E-ISSN: 1043-4062 |
| Publisher | Springer Science+Business Media (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.1007/s10602-025-09471-6 |
| OpenAlex | W4411010570 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 63 |
This paper examines whether major political institutional disruptions produce temporary shocks or structural breaks in long-term development. Using the 1979 Iranian Revolution as a natural experiment, we apply the synthetic control method to estimate its causal effect on economic growth and institutional quality. Drawing on a panel of 66 countries from 1950 to 2015, we construct counterfactual trajectories for Iran in the absence of revolutionary change. Our results show a persistent and statistically significant divergence in per capita GDP, institutional quality, and legal constraints on executive power. We perform in-space and in-time placebo tests to rule out confounding events, such as the Iran-Iraq War and international sanctions, and propose confidence interval estimation to address uncertainty in treatment effects. The findings identify the Iranian Revolution as a structural institutional rupture, with implications for the classification of institutional change more broadly. We contribute a generalizable empirical framework for distinguishing between temporary and structural institutional shocks in long-run development
Constitutional law · Development economics · Economics · Law and economics · Neoclassical economics · Political economy · Political science · Positive economics · Term (time · Corruption and Economic Development · Culture, Economy, and Development Studies · Law · World Systems and Global Transformations
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| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |