IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/jafrec/v33y2024isupplement_2pii26-ii38..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Political Economy of Economic Policy Advice

Author

Listed:
  • Stefan Dercon

Abstract

This article examines the political economy of economic policy advice. It offers a framework for assessing how to maximise the economic development impact of advice, allowing for the political incentives of those in power. It argues for a ‘second best’ analysis that looks to maximise development impact given political incentives and shows how standard advice often given by researchers, government advisors or international organisations such as the World Bank and the IMF may not be this second best option. Furthermore, it looks at the implications of treating political constraints as endogenous. Some examples illustrate how research and advice can be more impactful by considering local political economy conditions.

Suggested Citation

  • Stefan Dercon, 2024. "The Political Economy of Economic Policy Advice," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 33(Supplemen), pages 26-38.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:jafrec:v:33:y:2024:i:supplement_2:p:ii26-ii38.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jae/ejae027
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jonas Hjort & Diana Moreira & Gautam Rao & Juan Francisco Santini, 2021. "How Research Affects Policy: Experimental Evidence from 2,150 Brazilian Municipalities," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 111(5), pages 1442-1480, May.
    2. Dan Honig, 2022. "Managing for Motivation as Public Performance Improvement Strategy in Education & Far Beyond," CID Working Papers 409, Center for International Development at Harvard University.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Guizzo Altube, Matías & Scartascini, Carlos & Tommasi, Mariano, 2023. "The Political Economy of Redistribution and (in)Efficiency in Latin America and the Caribbean," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 13194, Inter-American Development Bank.
    2. Animashaun, Jubril & Wossink, Ada, 2024. "How do households cope during aggregate shocks? Evidence from the 2009–2015 oil crisis in Nigeria," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).

    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. Francesco Capozza & Ingar Haaland & Christopher Roth & Johannes Wohlfart, 2021. "Studying Information Acquisition in the Field: A Practical Guide and Review," CEBI working paper series 21-15, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. The Center for Economic Behavior and Inequality (CEBI).
    2. Ingar Haaland & Christopher Roth & Johannes Wohlfart, 2023. "Designing Information Provision Experiments," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 61(1), pages 3-40, March.
    3. Atheendar S. Venkataramani, 2021. "Rigor, Relevance, And Researcher Independence In Evidence‐Based Policymaking," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(2), pages 660-663, March.
    4. Felix Chopra & Ingar Haaland & Christopher Roth & Andreas Stegmann, 2024. "The Null Result Penalty," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 134(657), pages 193-219.
    5. Jingjing Zeng & Guihua Huang, 2024. "Bureaucratic biases in trust of expert policy advice: a randomized controlled experiment based on Chinese think tank reports," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 57(2), pages 305-351, June.
    6. Michael Thaler & Mattie Toma & Victor Yaneng Wang, 2024. "Numbers Tell, Words Sell," CESifo Working Paper Series 11600, CESifo.
    7. Yian Yin & Yuxiao Dong & Kuansan Wang & Dashun Wang & Benjamin F. Jones, 2022. "Public use and public funding of science," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 6(10), pages 1344-1350, October.
    8. Atheendar S. Venkataramani, 2021. "Rigor, Relevance, And Researcher Independence In Evidence‐Based Policymaking," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(2), pages 659-662, March.
    9. Ingar Haaland & Christopher Roth, 2023. "Beliefs about Racial Discrimination and Support for Pro-Black Policies," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 105(1), pages 40-53, January.
    10. Liu, Manwei, 2021. "Interdependent individuals : How aggregation, observation, and persuasion affect economic behavior and judgment," Other publications TiSEM ab3ef470-c4a4-4d6c-ba1a-4, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    11. Michael Gechter & Keisuke Hirano & Jean Lee & Mahreen Mahmud & Orville Mondal & Jonathan Morduch & Saravana Ravindran & Abu S. Shonchoy, 2024. "Selecting Experimental Sites for External Validity," Papers 2405.13241, arXiv.org.
    12. Boumans, Dorine & Gründler, Klaus & Potrafke, Niklas & Ruthardt, Fabian, 2024. "Political leaders and macroeconomic expectations: Evidence from a global survey experiment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 235(C).
    13. Dambudzo Muzenda & Norhan Sadik & Jamie Boex & Midori Makino & Chris Heymans & Gustavo Saltiel & Smita Misra, 2022. "Water Supply and Sanitation Policies, Institutions, and Regulation," World Bank Publications - Reports 37922, The World Bank Group.
    14. Callen, Michael & Gulzar, Saad & Hasanain, Ali & Khan, Muhammad Yasir & Rezaee, Arman, 2020. "Data and policy decisions: Experimental evidence from Pakistan," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    15. Francesco Capozza & Ingar Haaland & Christopher Roth & Johannes Wohlfart, 2022. "Recent Advances in Studies of News Consumption," ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series 204, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.
    16. Atheendar S Venkataramani & Rourke O’Brien & Gregory L Whitehorn & Alexander C Tsai, 2020. "Economic influences on population health in the United States: Toward policymaking driven by data and evidence," PLOS Medicine, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(9), pages 1-17, September.
    17. Sebastian Blesse & Philipp Lergetporer & Justus Nover & Katharina Werner, 2023. "Transparency and Policy Competition: Experimental Evidence from German Citizens and Politicians," Munich Papers in Political Economy 27, Munich School of Politics and Public Policy and the School of Management at the Technical University of Munich.
    18. Wayne Aaron Sandholtz, 2022. "The politics of policy reform: experimental evidence from Liberia," NOVAFRICA Working Paper Series wp2202, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Nova School of Business and Economics, NOVAFRICA.
    19. Richard Manning & Ian Goldman & Gonzalo Hernández Licona, 2020. "The impact of impact evaluation: Are impact evaluation and impact evaluation synthesis contributing to evidence generation and use in low- and middle-income countries?," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2020-20, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    20. Roberto Brunetti & Matthieu Pourieux, 2023. "Representative Policy-Makers? A Behavioral Experiment with French Politicians," Working Papers 2319, Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon St-Étienne (GATE Lyon St-Étienne), Université de Lyon.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • P00 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - General - - - General
    • N90 - Economic History - - Regional and Urban History - - - General, International, or Comparative
    • H12 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - Crisis Management

    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:oup:jafrec:v:33:y:2024:i:supplement_2:p:ii26-ii38.. 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/csaoxuk.html .

    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.