Abstract: This paper reviews progress made in understanding the effects of different dimensions o... more Abstract: This paper reviews progress made in understanding the effects of different dimensions of governance on economic development, and the sources of “good governance. ” The term governance has been used to embrace concepts that are heterogeneous both with respect to their effects on economic development and their genesis. Future progress in developing policy responses to “bad governance ” will depend on separately examining these heterogeneous elements – the security of property rights, the quality of bureaucratic performance, corruption, voice and accountability. Future progress will also depend on explicitly linking problems of governance to the overarching political environment and the incentives of governments to correct those problems.
Governments can significantly reduce earthquake mortality by implementing and enforcing quake-pro... more Governments can significantly reduce earthquake mortality by implementing and enforcing quake-proof construction regulation. The authors examine why many governments do not. Contrary to intuition, controlling for the strength and location of actual earthquakes, mortality is lower in countries with higher earthquake propensity, where the payoffs to mortality prevention are higher. Importantly, however, the government response to earthquake propensity depends on country income and the political incentives of governments to provide public goods to citizens. The opportunity costs of earthquake mortality prevention are higher in poorer countries; rich countries invest more in mortality prevention than poor countries in response to a higher
Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries face a critical choice as they strive to generate g... more Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries face a critical choice as they strive to generate greater private sector growth and more jobs: promote competition, provide equal opportunities for all entrepreneurs, and dismantle the current system of privileges for connected firms or risk perpetuating the current equilibrium of low job creation. This report shows that policies that stifle competition and create an uneven playing field abound in MENA and are a major constraint on private sector growth and job creation. These policies take different forms across countries and sectors but share several common features: they limit free entry in the domestic market, exclude certain firms from government programs, increase the regulatory burden and uncertainty for firms without connections, insulate certain firms and sectors from foreign competition, and create incentives that discourage domestic firms from competing in international markets. The report shows that such policies are often ca...
A large literature concludes that ethnic polarization, particularly in SubSaharan Africa, is a si... more A large literature concludes that ethnic polarization, particularly in SubSaharan Africa, is a significant cause of government policy failures and violence. The core assumption in this literature is that political competitors make credible commitments to pursue policies that favor their co-ethnics. This assumption is at odds with another literature that traces policy failure and conflict to the inability of competitors to make credible commitments and their consequent reliance on clientelist promises to narrow groups. This paper examines these conflicting positions using data on the partisan preferences of 24,000 individuals from 16 African countries. The analysis provides ample support for the claim that the political competition hinges on the “Big Man” and clientelist promises rather than on competing promises to pursue policies on behalf of co-ethnics. Credibility, clientelism and ethnicity in African politics: Can the “Big Man” make credible appeals to co-ethnics? Two contrastin...
Using an original database of 385 politically connected firms under the Mubarak regime in Egypt, ... more Using an original database of 385 politically connected firms under the Mubarak regime in Egypt, this chapter documents that: (1) the value of these firms went down by 13–16 percent more than non-connected firms after Mubarak was removed from power; (2) crony firms enjoyed multiple regulatory and fiscal privileges that reduced competition; (3) these firms came to dominate the financial market; and (4) the entry of connected firms in a sector reduced employment growth in these sectors. The chapter ends by speculating that a specificity of Egyptian cronyism is that it is aimed to exclude firms that may support the political opposition, and that, as a result, it was prevalent in growth-oriented sectors. This implied that it was economically costlier to maintain in Egypt when compared to countries where the political functions of cronyism are narrower.
The Database of Political Institutions presents institutional and electoral results data such as ... more The Database of Political Institutions presents institutional and electoral results data such as measures of checks and balances, tenure and stability of the government, identification of party affiliation and ideology, and fragmentation of opposition and government parties in the legislature. The current version of the database expands its coverage to about 180 countries for 45 years, 1975-2020. It has become one of the most cited databases in comparative political economy and comparative political institutions, with more than 4,500 article citations on Google Scholar as of December 2020.
This paper examines new data on public sector employees from eighteen Latin American countries to... more This paper examines new data on public sector employees from eighteen Latin American countries to shed light on the role of trust in the performance of government agencies. We developed an original survey taken during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic that includes randomized experiments with pandemic-related treatments. We document that individual-level trust in coworkers, other public employees, and citizens is positively related to performance-enhancing behaviors, such as cooperation and information sharing, and policy attitudes, such as openness to technological innovations in public service delivery. Trust is more strongly linked to positive behaviors and attitudes in non-merit-based civil service systems. High-trust and low-trust respondents report different assessments of their main work constraints. Also, they draw different inferences and prefer different policy responses when exposed to data-based framing treatments about social distancing outcomes in their countries. Low-trust public employees are more likely to assign responsibility for a negative outcome to the government and to prefer stricter enforcement of social distancing.
Despite the prominence of information in theories of electoral accountability, providing voters w... more Despite the prominence of information in theories of electoral accountability, providing voters with information often fails to improve politician performance. Using two experiments in the Philippines, we show that when voters are unfamiliar with basic government capabilities, merely informing them of what politicians could do is sufficient to decrease support for incumbents. However, politicians can counteract this decrease in support by increasing clientelistic practices such as vote buying. Our work shows how even neutral information campaigns can improve the leverage of voters vis-à-vis their politicians, offering guidance for the design of interventions to change the electoral equilibrium in clientelistic countries.
This paper proposes and empirically tests a new demand-side explanation for distortions in public... more This paper proposes and empirically tests a new demand-side explanation for distortions in public spending composition. Voters prefer spending with certain and immediate benefits when they have low trust in electoral promises and high discount rates. The paper incorporates these characteristics of voter choices into a probabilistic voting model with public spending tradeoffs. In equilibrium, candidates promising larger allocations to transfers and short-term public goods are more likely to win elections in settings with low trust and high impatience. An original survey of individual-level preferences for public spending in seven Latin American capital cities provides observational and experimental evidence consistent with the model-derived hypotheses. Respondents reporting low trust in politician promises are more likely to prefer transfers to public goods; respondents with high discount rates prefer short-term to long-term spending. These patterns also appear in country-level data on spending outcomes from the last two decades.
Abstract: This paper reviews progress made in understanding the effects of different dimensions o... more Abstract: This paper reviews progress made in understanding the effects of different dimensions of governance on economic development, and the sources of “good governance. ” The term governance has been used to embrace concepts that are heterogeneous both with respect to their effects on economic development and their genesis. Future progress in developing policy responses to “bad governance ” will depend on separately examining these heterogeneous elements – the security of property rights, the quality of bureaucratic performance, corruption, voice and accountability. Future progress will also depend on explicitly linking problems of governance to the overarching political environment and the incentives of governments to correct those problems.
Governments can significantly reduce earthquake mortality by implementing and enforcing quake-pro... more Governments can significantly reduce earthquake mortality by implementing and enforcing quake-proof construction regulation. The authors examine why many governments do not. Contrary to intuition, controlling for the strength and location of actual earthquakes, mortality is lower in countries with higher earthquake propensity, where the payoffs to mortality prevention are higher. Importantly, however, the government response to earthquake propensity depends on country income and the political incentives of governments to provide public goods to citizens. The opportunity costs of earthquake mortality prevention are higher in poorer countries; rich countries invest more in mortality prevention than poor countries in response to a higher
Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries face a critical choice as they strive to generate g... more Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries face a critical choice as they strive to generate greater private sector growth and more jobs: promote competition, provide equal opportunities for all entrepreneurs, and dismantle the current system of privileges for connected firms or risk perpetuating the current equilibrium of low job creation. This report shows that policies that stifle competition and create an uneven playing field abound in MENA and are a major constraint on private sector growth and job creation. These policies take different forms across countries and sectors but share several common features: they limit free entry in the domestic market, exclude certain firms from government programs, increase the regulatory burden and uncertainty for firms without connections, insulate certain firms and sectors from foreign competition, and create incentives that discourage domestic firms from competing in international markets. The report shows that such policies are often ca...
A large literature concludes that ethnic polarization, particularly in SubSaharan Africa, is a si... more A large literature concludes that ethnic polarization, particularly in SubSaharan Africa, is a significant cause of government policy failures and violence. The core assumption in this literature is that political competitors make credible commitments to pursue policies that favor their co-ethnics. This assumption is at odds with another literature that traces policy failure and conflict to the inability of competitors to make credible commitments and their consequent reliance on clientelist promises to narrow groups. This paper examines these conflicting positions using data on the partisan preferences of 24,000 individuals from 16 African countries. The analysis provides ample support for the claim that the political competition hinges on the “Big Man” and clientelist promises rather than on competing promises to pursue policies on behalf of co-ethnics. Credibility, clientelism and ethnicity in African politics: Can the “Big Man” make credible appeals to co-ethnics? Two contrastin...
Using an original database of 385 politically connected firms under the Mubarak regime in Egypt, ... more Using an original database of 385 politically connected firms under the Mubarak regime in Egypt, this chapter documents that: (1) the value of these firms went down by 13–16 percent more than non-connected firms after Mubarak was removed from power; (2) crony firms enjoyed multiple regulatory and fiscal privileges that reduced competition; (3) these firms came to dominate the financial market; and (4) the entry of connected firms in a sector reduced employment growth in these sectors. The chapter ends by speculating that a specificity of Egyptian cronyism is that it is aimed to exclude firms that may support the political opposition, and that, as a result, it was prevalent in growth-oriented sectors. This implied that it was economically costlier to maintain in Egypt when compared to countries where the political functions of cronyism are narrower.
The Database of Political Institutions presents institutional and electoral results data such as ... more The Database of Political Institutions presents institutional and electoral results data such as measures of checks and balances, tenure and stability of the government, identification of party affiliation and ideology, and fragmentation of opposition and government parties in the legislature. The current version of the database expands its coverage to about 180 countries for 45 years, 1975-2020. It has become one of the most cited databases in comparative political economy and comparative political institutions, with more than 4,500 article citations on Google Scholar as of December 2020.
This paper examines new data on public sector employees from eighteen Latin American countries to... more This paper examines new data on public sector employees from eighteen Latin American countries to shed light on the role of trust in the performance of government agencies. We developed an original survey taken during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic that includes randomized experiments with pandemic-related treatments. We document that individual-level trust in coworkers, other public employees, and citizens is positively related to performance-enhancing behaviors, such as cooperation and information sharing, and policy attitudes, such as openness to technological innovations in public service delivery. Trust is more strongly linked to positive behaviors and attitudes in non-merit-based civil service systems. High-trust and low-trust respondents report different assessments of their main work constraints. Also, they draw different inferences and prefer different policy responses when exposed to data-based framing treatments about social distancing outcomes in their countries. Low-trust public employees are more likely to assign responsibility for a negative outcome to the government and to prefer stricter enforcement of social distancing.
Despite the prominence of information in theories of electoral accountability, providing voters w... more Despite the prominence of information in theories of electoral accountability, providing voters with information often fails to improve politician performance. Using two experiments in the Philippines, we show that when voters are unfamiliar with basic government capabilities, merely informing them of what politicians could do is sufficient to decrease support for incumbents. However, politicians can counteract this decrease in support by increasing clientelistic practices such as vote buying. Our work shows how even neutral information campaigns can improve the leverage of voters vis-à-vis their politicians, offering guidance for the design of interventions to change the electoral equilibrium in clientelistic countries.
This paper proposes and empirically tests a new demand-side explanation for distortions in public... more This paper proposes and empirically tests a new demand-side explanation for distortions in public spending composition. Voters prefer spending with certain and immediate benefits when they have low trust in electoral promises and high discount rates. The paper incorporates these characteristics of voter choices into a probabilistic voting model with public spending tradeoffs. In equilibrium, candidates promising larger allocations to transfers and short-term public goods are more likely to win elections in settings with low trust and high impatience. An original survey of individual-level preferences for public spending in seven Latin American capital cities provides observational and experimental evidence consistent with the model-derived hypotheses. Respondents reporting low trust in politician promises are more likely to prefer transfers to public goods; respondents with high discount rates prefer short-term to long-term spending. These patterns also appear in country-level data on spending outcomes from the last two decades.
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