Political competition and economic growth: A test of two tales

•We study the relationship between political competition and economic growth.•We nest two competing hypotheses drawn from the relevant literature.•Results support a U-shaped relationship between political competition and growth.

We empirically compare the thesis of Acemoglu and Robinson (2006) that the impact of political competition on economic growth is non-monotonic with that of Besley et al. (2010) that it is monotonically increasing, using data on 119 economies in the period 1980-2010. The results are in accord with Acemoglu and Robinson (2006).