IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ecopol/v16y2004i2p117-146.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Adjustments in Different Government Systems

Author

Listed:
  • Enrico Spolaore

Abstract

This paper develops a model in which agents have a conflict of interest over what instrument to use for policy adjustment in response to shocks. Three different government systems are analyzed: cabinet systems, in which one decision‐maker has full control over adjustment policies; consensus systems, in which adjustment policies must be agreed upon by all agents; and checks‐and‐balances systems, in which one agent decides what instrument should be used for adjustment, but the remaining agents may veto its use. All three systems may lead to inefficient policies. The cabinet system adjusts too often. The other systems may fail to adjust when adjustment is optimal. The relative performance of the three systems depends on the degree of political fragmentation and the size distribution of shocks.

Suggested Citation

  • Enrico Spolaore, 2004. "Adjustments in Different Government Systems," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 16(2), pages 117-146, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ecopol:v:16:y:2004:i:2:p:117-146
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0343.2004.00134.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0343.2004.00134.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1468-0343.2004.00134.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Diermeier, Daniel & Merlo, Antonio, 2004. "An empirical investigation of coalitional bargaining procedures," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(3-4), pages 783-797, March.
    2. Alberto Alesina & Roberto Perotti & José Tavares, 1998. "The Political Economy of Fiscal Adjustments," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 29(1), pages 197-266.
    3. Jean Tirole, 1988. "The Theory of Industrial Organization," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262200716, December.
    4. Merlo, Antonio, 1997. "Bargaining over Governments in a Stochastic Environment," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(1), pages 101-131, February.
    5. Torsten Persson & Gerard Roland & Guido Tabellini, 2000. "Comparative Politics and Public Finance," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 108(6), pages 1121-1161, December.
    6. Avinash Dixit, 1991. "Analytical Approximations in Models of Hysteresis," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 58(1), pages 141-151.
    7. Raúl Labán & Federico Sturzenegger, 1994. "Distributional Conflict, Financial Adaptation And Delayed Stabilizations," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 6(3), pages 257-276, November.
    8. Drazen, Allan & Grilli, Vittorio, 1993. "The Benefit of Crises for Economic Reforms," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(3), pages 598-607, June.
    9. Alt, James E. & Lowry, Robert C., 1994. "Divided Government, Fiscal Institutions, and Budget Deficits: Evidence from the States," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 88(4), pages 811-828, December.
    10. J. Michael Harrison & Thomas M. Sellke & Allison J. Taylor, 1983. "Impulse Control of Brownian Motion," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 8(3), pages 454-466, August.
    11. Poterba, James M, 1994. "State Responses to Fiscal Crises: The Effects of Budgetary Institutions and Politics," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 102(4), pages 799-821, August.
    12. Bruno, Michael & Easterly, William, 1996. "Inflation's Children: Tales of Crises That Beget Reforms," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(2), pages 213-217, May.
    13. John C. Harsanyi, 1953. "Cardinal Utility in Welfare Economics and in the Theory of Risk-taking," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 61(5), pages 434-434.
    14. Alesina, Alberto & Drazen, Allan, 1991. "Why Are Stabilizations Delayed?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(5), pages 1170-1188, December.
    15. Fernandez, Raquel & Rodrik, Dani, 1991. "Resistance to Reform: Status Quo Bias in the Presence of Individual-Specific Uncertainty," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(5), pages 1146-1155, December.
    16. Alberto Alesina & Roberto Perotti, 1995. "The Political Economy of Budget Deficits," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 42(1), pages 1-31, March.
    17. Federico Sturzenegger & Mariano Tommasi (ed.), 1998. "The Political Economy of Reform," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262194007, December.
    18. Edwards, Sebastian & Tabellini, Guido, 1991. "Explaining fiscal policies and inflation in developing countries," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 10(1, Supple), pages 16-48, March.
    19. Howitt, Peter & Wintrobe, Ronald, 1995. "The political economy of inaction," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(3), pages 329-353, March.
    20. Roubini, Nouriel, 1991. "Economic and political determinants of budget deficits in developing countries," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 10(1, Supple), pages 49-72, March.
    21. Allan Drazen, 1996. "The political economy of delayed reform," Journal of Economic Policy Reform, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 1(1), pages 25-46.
    22. Rodrik, Dani, 1993. "The Positive Economics of Policy Reform," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(2), pages 356-361, May.
    23. John C. Harsanyi, 1955. "Cardinal Welfare, Individualistic Ethics, and Interpersonal Comparisons of Utility," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 63(4), pages 309-309.
    24. Alberto Alesina & Geoffrey Carliner, 1991. "Politics and Economics in the Eighties," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number ales91-1, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Vítor Castro, 2003. "The Impact of Conflicts of Interest on Inflation Stabilization," NIPE Working Papers 8/2003, NIPE - Universidade do Minho.
    2. Benczes, István, 2008. "A költségvetési hiány politikai gazdaságtana [The political economy of budgetary deficit]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(3), pages 218-232.
    3. John Ashworth & Benny Geys & Bruno Heyndels, 2005. "Government Weakness and Local Public Debt Development in Flemish Municipalities," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 12(4), pages 395-422, August.
    4. Hans Pitlik, 2004. "Institutionelle Voraussetzungen marktorientierter Reformen der Wirtschaftspolitik," Diskussionspapiere aus dem Institut für Volkswirtschaftslehre der Universität Hohenheim 240/2004, Department of Economics, University of Hohenheim, Germany.
    5. Prato, Carlo & Wolton, Stephane, 2018. "Rational ignorance, populism, and reform," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 119-135.
    6. Micael Castanheira & Gaëtan Nicodème & Paola Profeta, 2012. "On the political economics of tax reforms: survey and empirical assessment," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 19(4), pages 598-624, August.
    7. Martinelli, Cesar & Escorza, Raul, 2007. "When are stabilizations delayed? Alesina-Drazen revisited," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(5), pages 1223-1245, July.
    8. Alberto Alesina & Silvia Ardagna & Francesco Trebbi, 2006. "Who Adjusts and When?The Political Economy of Reforms," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 53(si), pages 1-1.
    9. Chiara Dalle Nogare, 2000. "I governi di coalizione sono tutti "fiscally irresponsible"? Un'indagine empirica con l'utilizzo della cluster analysis," Politica economica, Società editrice il Mulino, issue 1, pages 93-130.
    10. Bernecker, Andreas, 2016. "Divided we reform? Evidence from US welfare policies," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 24-38.
    11. Alesina, A. & Passalacqua, A., 2016. "The Political Economy of Government Debt," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 2599-2651, Elsevier.
    12. Bonatti, Luigi & Fracasso, Andrea, 2019. "Policy inertia, self-defeating expectations and structural reforms: can policy modeling cope?," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 41(5), pages 943-962.
    13. Adams, Richard H. Jr., 2000. "The politics of economic policy reform in developing countries," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2443, The World Bank.
    14. Marcela Eslava, 2011. "The Political Economy Of Fiscal Deficits: A Survey," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(4), pages 645-673, September.
    15. Kontodaimon, Martha & Neumärker, Bernhard, 2015. "Two level reform game problems of Greece," The Constitutional Economics Network Working Papers 03-2015, University of Freiburg, Department of Economic Policy and Constitutional Economic Theory.
    16. Salvatore Vassallo, 1998. "Le basi politico-istituzionali del rigore finanziario," Stato e mercato, Società editrice il Mulino, issue 3, pages 433-468.
    17. Andreas Bernecker, 2014. "Divided We Reform? Evidence from US Welfare Policies," CESifo Working Paper Series 4564, CESifo.
    18. Mounir Mahmalat & Declan Curran, 2018. "Do Crises Induce Reform? A Critical Review Of Conception, Methodology And Empirical Evidence Of The €˜Crisis Hypothesis’," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(3), pages 613-648, July.
    19. Ziogas, Thanasis & Panagiotidis, Theodore, 2021. "Revisiting the political economy of fiscal adjustments," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    20. Bluhm, Richard & Thomsson, Kaj, 2020. "Holding on? Ethnic divisions, political institutions and the duration of economic declines," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:ecopol:v:16:y:2004:i:2:p:117-146. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0954-1985 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.