Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad is often credited with Malaysia's dramatic economic success post-1980. It is well known that the Mahathir regime installed centralized power in the Office of the Prime Minister (PM) and greatly extended state capacity through a far-reaching clientelist system. Prima Facie, the Malaysian experience appears to validate power centralization and state capacity as complementary to economic development. Though these changes did make Malaysia more susceptible to corruption, dramatically exhibited in 2015 with the 1MDB 5 billion dollar scandal, it has been argued that the clientelist political structure installed in Malaysia generally manages corruption at tolerable levels in order to provide the state the capacity needed to implement controls for economic development that began in the 1980s. While Malaysia experienced impressive economic growth during the Mahathir administration, our test using the Synthetic Control Method finds that GDP per capita fell well below what would have been expected under the governing structures in place in the 1970s, before Mahathir took office—a loss of approximately $4000 per capita below its potential. This study provides evidence of powerful negative economic consequences attributable to greater power centralization and enhanced state capacity inaugurated under Mahathir.

中文翻译：

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马哈蒂尔政权对马来西亚经济的影响

马哈蒂尔·本·穆罕默德 (Mahathir bin Mohamad) 博士经常被认为是 1980 年后马来西亚经济取得巨大成功的功劳。众所周知，马哈蒂尔政权在总理办公室（PM）中设置了中央集权，并通过影响深远的庇护制度极大地扩展了国家能力。初步证据, 马来西亚的经验似乎证实了权力集中和国家能力作为经济发展的补充。尽管这些变化确实使马来西亚更容易受到腐败的影响，2015 年 1MDB 50 亿美元的丑闻戏剧性地展示了这一点，但有人认为，马来西亚安装的庇护主义政治结构通常将腐败控制在可容忍的水平，以便为国家提供所需的能力实施 1980 年代开始的经济发展管制措施。虽然马来西亚在马哈蒂尔执政期间经历了令人印象深刻的经济增长，但我们使用综合控制方法进行的测试发现，人均 GDP 远低于 1970 年代现有治理结构下的预期水平，在马哈蒂尔上任之前——人均损失约 4000 美元，低于其潜力。这项研究提供的证据表明，由于马哈蒂尔领导下的更大的权力集中化和增强的国家能力导致了强大的负面经济后果。