Political Reforms and Public Policies: Evidence from Agricultural Protection

Arbeitspapier

This paper studies the effect of political regime transitions on public policy using a dataset on global agricultural distortions over 50 years (including data from 74 developing and developed countries over the period 1955-2005). We employ both difference-in-differences regressions and semi-parametric matching methods, exploiting the time series and cross-sectional variation in the data. Our semi-parametric estimates show that parametric methods might underestimate the effect of democracy on public policy. In addition, we find that the effect is asymmetric: agricultural protection increases after a country's transition to democracy of about 9% points, but there is no effect when the political regime shifts from democracy to autocracy. Overall, the evidence supports the redistributive nature of democratic institutions toward the majority and, therefore, it is consistent with the median voter model of political behaviour.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: LICOS Discussion Paper ; No. 251

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior ; Trade Policy; International Trade Organizations ; Economic Development: Agriculture; Natural Resources; Energy; Environment; Other Primary Products ; Capitalist Systems: Political Economy ; Agricultural Policy; Food Policy
• Subject: Democratic Reforms ; Agricultural Distortions ; Comparative ; Demokratisierung ; Politisches System ; Agrarpolitik ; Nichtparametrisches Verfahren ; Zeitreihenanalyse ; Median Voter ; Welt

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Olper, Alessandro ; Falkowsk, Jan ; Swinnen, Johan
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, LICOS Centre for Institutions and Economic Performance
• (where): Leuven
• (when): 2009

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/74927
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET