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This article examines how the rule of law and democratic accountability have affected Hong Kong's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate in the past 20 yr. We find that democratic accountability has deteriorated substantially since the changeover of sovereignty in 1997, while the rule of law has remained strong and stable. Empirical results from autoregressive distributed lag bounds tests show a positive long-run relationship between growth and democratic accountability, and Granger causality tests reveal that democratic accountability causes the growth rate of GDP in the short run. These conclusions are robust to control for the effects of investment and the Asian financial crisis in 1997. (JEL O18, O49, P17), I. INTRODUCTION Hong Kong became a Special Administrative Region (SAR) after its sovereignty reverted to Chinain July 1997. Since then, the Basic Law, which is the SAR's mini-constitution, has functioned [...]