American Economic Journal:
Macroeconomics
ISSN 1945-7707 (Print) | ISSN 1945-7715 (Online)
Democracy and Reforms: Evidence from a New Dataset
American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics
vol. 5,
no. 4, October 2013
(pp. 179–204)
Abstract
Empirical evidence on the relationship between democracy and economic reforms is limited to few reforms, countries, and years. This paper studies the effect of democracy on the adoption of economic reforms using a new dataset on reforms in the financial, capital and banking sectors, product markets, agriculture, and trade for 150 countries over the period 1960-2004. Democracy has a positive and significant impact on the adoption of economic reforms, but there is scarce evidence that economic reforms foster democracy. Our results are robust to the inclusion of a large variety of controls and estimation strategies.Citation
Giuliano, Paola, Prachi Mishra, and Antonio Spilimbergo. 2013. "Democracy and Reforms: Evidence from a New Dataset." American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 5 (4): 179–204. DOI: 10.1257/mac.5.4.179Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- D72 Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
- E02 Institutions and the Macroeconomy
- E60 Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook: General
- L51 Economics of Regulation
- O17 Formal and Informal Sectors; Shadow Economy; Institutional Arrangements
- O20 Development Planning and Policy: General