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1999 (3)

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When Do Special Interests Run Rampant? Disentangling the Role in Banking Crises of Elections, Incomplete Information, and
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Year: 1999 Publisher: Washington, DC : World Bank,

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February 2001 Government responses to banking crises are less likely to favor special interest groups when elections are near, voters are better informed about the costs of inefficient government decisions, and governments have multiple veto players. Keefer investigates the political determinants of government decisions that benefit special interest groups--especially government decisions to deal with banking crises. He finds that the better informed the voters, the more proximate elections, and the larger the number of political veto players (conditional on the costs to voters of relevant policy decisions), the smaller the government's fiscal transfers are to the financial sector and the less likely the government is to exercise forbearance in dealing with insolvent financial institutions. The results suggest that policies that might be appropriate for mitigating banking crises in the United States might be less effective in settings where voters are less informed, where elections are less competitive, and where there are fewer veto players, because in these settings checks and balances are missing. These policies include: * Disseminating information about the costs of inefficient government decisions. * Improving the structure of legislative regulatory oversight. * Intervening early in insolvent banks. Keefer concludes that the more veto players there are, the less likely policies are to favor special interest groups (contrary to previous views). Moreover, the closer the elections, the less likely policies are to favor special interest groups. This paper--a product of Regulation and Competition Policy, Development Research Group--is part of a larger effort in the group to explore the policy consequences of political and social institutions. The author may be contacted at pkeefer@worldbank.org.


Book
Bureaucratic Delegation and Political Institutions : When Are Independent Central Banks Irrelevant?
Authors: ---
Year: 1999 Publisher: Washington, D.C., The World Bank,

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March 2000 - Does delegation of policymaking authority to independent agencies improve policy outcomes? This paper reports new theory and tests related to delegation of monetary policy to an independent central bank. The authors find that delegation reduces inflation only under specific institutional and political conditions. The government's ability to credibly commit to policy announcements is critical to the successful implementation of economic policies as diverse as capital taxation and utilities regulation. One frequently advocated means of signaling credible commitment is to delegate authority to an agency that will not have an incentive to opportunistically change policies once the private sector has taken such steps as signing wage contracts or making irreversible investments. Delegating authority is suggested as a government strategy particularly for monetary policy. And existing work on the independence of central banks generally assumes that government decisions to delegate are irrevocable. But delegation - in monetary policy as elsewhere - is inevitably a political choice, and can be reversed, contend Keefer and Stasavage. They develop a model of monetary policy that relaxes the assumption that monetary delegation is irreversible. Among the testable predictions of the model are these: The presence of an independent central bank should reduce inflation only in the presence of political checks and balances. This effect should be evident in both developing and industrial countries; Political actions to interfere with the central bank should be more apparent when there are few checks and balances; The effects of checks and balances should be more marked when political decisionmakers are more polarized. The authors test these predictions and find extensive empirical evidence to support each of the observable implications of their model: Central banks are associated with better inflation outcomes in the presence of checks and balances. The turnover of central bank governors is reduced when governors have tenure protections supported by political checks and balances. And the effect of checks and balances is enhanced in more polarized political environments. This paper - a product of Regulation and Competition Policy, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to identify the conditions under which regulatory reforms can be effective. The authors may be contacted at pkeefer@worldbank.org or d.stasavage@lse.ac.uk.


Book
New Tools and New Tests in Comparative Political Economy : The Database of Political Institutions
Authors: --- --- --- ---
Year: 1999 Publisher: Washington, D.C., The World Bank,

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February 2000 - Some say that democracy is more likely to survive under parliamentary governments. That result is not robust to the use of different variables from the Database of Political Institutions, a large new cross-country database that may illuminate many other issues affecting and affected by political institutions. This paper introduces a large new cross-country database on political institutions: the Database on Political Institutions (DPI). Beck, Clarke, Groff, Keefer, and Walsh summarize key variables (many of them new), compare this data set with others, and explore the range of issues for which the data should prove invaluable. Among the novel variables they introduce: Several measures of tenure, stability, and checks and balances; Identification of parties with the government coalition or the opposition; Fragmentation of opposition and government parties in legislatures. The authors illustrate the application of DPI variables to several problems in political economy. Stepan and Skach, for example, find that democracy is more likely to survive under parliamentary governments than presidential systems. But this result is not robust to the use of different variables from the DPI, which raises puzzles for future research. Similarly, Roubini and Sachs find that divided governments in the OECD run higher budget deficits after fiscal shocks. Replication of their work using DPI indicators of divided government indicates otherwise, again suggesting issues for future research. Among questions in political science and economics that this database may illuminate: the determinants of democratic consolidation, the political conditions for economic reform, the political and institutional roots of corruption, and the elements of appropriate and institutionally sensitive design of economic policy. This paper - a product of Regulation and Competition Policy, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to understand the institutional bases of poverty alleviation and economic reform. The study was funded by the Bank's Research Support Budget under the research project Database on Institutions for Government Decisionmaking (RPO 682-79). The authors may be contacted at tbeck@worldbank.org, gclarke@worldbank.org, pkeefer@worldbank.org, or pwalsh@worldbank.org.

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