Analysis of Effects of Democracy on Inflation: Case Study of MENA

Inflation caused economic instability and has undesirable effects on economy performance such as economic growth, consumption, investment and other economic variables. On the other hand inflation affected several factors such as monetary and fiscal policy and political factors. Political situation is one of the element that noted by many of researches especially democracy situation. Many researchers had used political business cycle to explanation of inflation and democracy relationship that Nordhaus (1975) was progressive researcher in this subject. Thus the aim of this research is to investigate the relationship between democracy and inflation rate in selected countries of Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region by panel data approaches over 2000-2016 periods. The results of fixed panel data estimation showed that democracy has negatively and significantly effects on inflation in selected countries of MENA. Also gross domestic product has negatively and significantly effects on inflation, too. On the other hand liquidity and government size have positively and significantly effects on inflation but trade have positively effects on inflation but not significantly.