Who your governor is actually accounts for about 5% of how well your state's entire economy is doing.
SSRN · March 18, 2026 · 6430846
The Takeaway
Economists often assume that state-level performance is driven by national trends and that individual leaders are mostly figureheads. This study quantifies the 'leader effect,' finding that governors have a statistically significant personal impact on economic growth, while academic journal editors account for a massive 18% of a journal’s success.
From the abstract
Do leaders matter, and to what extent? Prior research has relied largely on succession studies linking performance changes to changes in top‑level leaders, but this approach is limited by endogenous succession processes and inconsistent performance metrics across organizations. We address these concerns by examining two settings with greater methodological control: journal editors and U.S. state governors, both appointed to fixed terms through largely exogenous processes and evaluated using stan