IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/wbecrv/v30y2016i1p1-23..html

Learning Dynamics and Support for Economic Reforms: Why Good News Can Be Bad

Author

Listed:
  • Sweder J. G. van Wijnbergen
  • Tim Willems

Abstract

Support for economic reforms has often shown puzzling dynamics: many reforms that began successfully lost public support. We show that learning dynamics can rationalize this paradox because the process of revealing reform outcomes is an example of sampling without replacement. We show that this concept challenges the conventional wisdom that one should begin by revealing reform winners. It may also lead to situations in which reforms that enjoy both ex ante and ex post majority support will still not come to completion. We use our framework to explain why gradual reforms worked well in China (where successes in Special Economic Zones facilitated further reform), whereas this was much less the case for Latin American and Central and Eastern European countries.

Suggested Citation

  • Sweder J. G. van Wijnbergen & Tim Willems, 2016. "Learning Dynamics and Support for Economic Reforms: Why Good News Can Be Bad," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 30(1), pages 1-23.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:wbecrv:v:30:y:2016:i:1:p:1-23.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/wber/lhu005
    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:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Oscar Calvo-Gonzalez & Barbara Cunha & Riccardo Trezzi, 2017. "When Winners Feel Like Losers: Evidence from an Energy Subsidy Reform," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 31(2), pages 329-350.
    3. Morrow, John & Carter, Michael R., 2017. "Learning about the prospects for mobility: Economic and political dynamics following fundamental policy reform," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 155(C), pages 38-53.
    4. Morrow, John & Carter, Michael, 2013. "Left, right, left: income, learning and political dynamics," MPRA Paper 45020, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • P21 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist and Transition Economies - - - Planning, Coordination, and Reform

    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:wbecrv:v:30:y:2016:i:1:p:1-23.. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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/wrldbus.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.