Years from reform initiation to measurable economic return. Different institutional changes operate on fundamentally different timescales.
Different reform types operate on fundamentally different timescales. Anti-corruption measures deliver the fastest returns: tax revenue improvements appear within one to two years as leakage shrinks, and FDI surges follow within three to four years as investor confidence responds to reduced bribery risk. Rwanda's post-2003 anti-corruption drive saw FDI increase 12-fold within five years.
At the other end, democratisation delivers the largest cumulative GDP effect but unfolds over a generation. Acemoglu et al. (2019) estimate that countries transitioning to democracy see approximately 20% higher GDP per capita after 25 years, but the effect accumulates slowly and unevenly. The implication for policymakers is clear: anti-corruption is the reform with the best benefit-to-timeline ratio, while democratisation requires the kind of patient institutional investment that few political cycles reward.