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Politics and Productivity
Author(s) -
Klein Peter G.,
Luu Hung
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
economic inquiry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.823
H-Index - 72
eISSN - 1465-7295
pISSN - 0095-2583
DOI - 10.1093/ei/cbg019
Subject(s) - productivity , economics , politics , frontier , public economics , stochastic frontier analysis , microeconomics , macroeconomics , production (economics) , political science , law
We use a stochastic frontier approach to study the effects of political and regulatory institutions on aggregate productivity in 39 countries from 1975 to 1990. We show that technical efficiency is positively related to policies supporting laissez‐faire and political structures that promote policy stability. Moreover, models of technical efficiency incorporating both measures perform better than models including only one or the other. This suggests that economic performance depends not only on current policies but also on the confidence of market participants and outside investors that these policies will remain in place.