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No better time than now: Future uncertainty and private investment under dictatorship
Author(s) -
Albertus Michael,
Gay Victor
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
economics and politics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1468-0343
pISSN - 0954-1985
DOI - 10.1111/ecpo.12120
Subject(s) - autocracy , elite , authoritarianism , investment (military) , successor cardinal , dictatorship , incentive , construct (python library) , economics , political science , market economy , democracy , politics , computer science , law , mathematics , mathematical analysis , programming language
Despite received wisdom that long time horizons and formal institutions can induce private investment under dictatorship, there is substantial investment even in relatively unconstrained regimes. This paper provides a novel explanation for the puzzle of investment in these regimes: economic elites’ uncertainty over expected investment returns under plausible alternative authoritarian successors. We construct a noisy signaling model that captures how uncertainty over which type of authoritarian successor will rule next and uncertainty in the truthfulness of policy promises made by potential autocratic successors might provide incentives for elite investment.