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Does constitutional entrenchment matter for economic freedom?
Author(s) -
Callais Justin,
Young Andrew T.
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
contemporary economic policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.454
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1465-7287
pISSN - 1074-3529
DOI - 10.1111/coep.12533
Subject(s) - counterfactual conditional , economic freedom , construct (python library) , economics , property rights , matching (statistics) , degrees of freedom (physics and chemistry) , government (linguistics) , property (philosophy) , public economics , econometrics , microeconomics , counterfactual thinking , mathematics , computer science , psychology , market economy , social psychology , linguistics , statistics , physics , philosophy , epistemology , quantum mechanics , programming language
A growing number of studies explore the determinants of economic freedom. Very few of them consider constitutional design. We study entrenchment, that is, the extent to which constitutions are more costly to change than ordinary policies and institutions. We utilize 1970–2017 data and study episodes where countries adopted meaningfully more entrenched constitutions. Using matching methods, we construct plausible counterfactuals against which to compare their post‐treatment changes in economic freedom. We report no significant effects on overall freedom. There is some evidence that entrenchment leads to smaller government size, more regulation, and weaker property rights. However, none of these results are robust.