IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/irapec/v18y2004i1p1-22.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Political Freedom, External Liberalization and Financial Stability

Author

Listed:
  • Christian Weller
  • Laura Singleton

Abstract

The chance of financial crises has grown in emerging economies in recent decades. Increasingly, the interest has shifted away from market-based reforms, such as more transparency, towards potentially stabilizing institutions. Among these institutions are better political freedoms, as they could help to foster stronger and more stable domestic demand growth. Using data from the IMF and Freedom House, we test the effectiveness of political freedoms, in particular of civil liberties and political rights, in reducing the chance of banking and currency crises. Our results show that more civil liberties, which are closely linked to worker rights, lower the chance of banking and currency crises, while political rights have no effect on the chance of financial crises. Also, this effect disappears in more open economies, likely due to increased capital mobility.

Suggested Citation

  • Christian Weller & Laura Singleton, 2004. "Political Freedom, External Liberalization and Financial Stability," International Review of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(1), pages 1-22.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:irapec:v:18:y:2004:i:1:p:1-22
    DOI: 10.1080/0269217032000148636
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0269217032000148636
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/0269217032000148636?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Carmen M. Reinhart & Graciela L. Kaminsky, 1999. "The Twin Crises: The Causes of Banking and Balance-of-Payments Problems," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(3), pages 473-500, June.
    2. Michael W. Klein & Giovanni Olivei, 1999. "Capital Account Liberalization, Financial Depth and Economic Growth," NBER Working Papers 7384, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Alberto Alesina & Dani Rodrik, 1994. "Distributive Politics and Economic Growth," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(2), pages 465-490.
    4. Honohan, Patrick & Klingebiel, Daniela, 2000. "Controlling the fiscal costs of banking crises," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2441, The World Bank.
    5. Philip Arestis & Panicos Demetriades, 1999. "Financial Liberalization: The Experience of Developing Countries," Eastern Economic Journal, Eastern Economic Association, vol. 25(4), pages 441-457, Fall.
    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. Christian E. Weller, 2011. "Could international labour rights play a role in US trade?," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 35(1), pages 39-57.
    2. Ferdi Botha, 2016. "The Good African Society Index," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 126(1), pages 57-77, March.
    3. Christian E. Weller & Manita Rao, 2008. "Can Progressive Taxation Contribute to Economic Development?," Working Papers wp176, Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
    4. Jac C. Heckelman, 2010. "The Connection between Democratic Freedoms and Growth in Transition Economies," Applied Economics Quarterly (formerly: Konjunkturpolitik), Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, vol. 56(2), pages 121-146.
    5. Jeffrey A. Edwards & Jennis J. Biser, 2011. "The interactive effect of remittances and civil liberties on investment and consumption," International Journal of Development Issues, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 10(1), pages 20-33, April.

    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. Alessandra Bonfiglioli & Caterina Mendicino, 2004. "Financial liberalization, bank crises and growth: Assessing the links," Economics Working Papers 946, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    2. Kosuke Aoki & Gianluca Benigno & Nobuhiro Kiyotaki, 2009. "Capital Flows and Asset Prices," NBER Chapters, in: NBER International Seminar on Macroeconomics 2007, pages 175-216, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Bonfiglioli, Alessandra, 2008. "Financial integration, productivity and capital accumulation," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(2), pages 337-355, December.
    4. Andrew van Hulten & Michael Webber, 2010. "Do developing countries need 'good' institutions and policies and deep financial markets to benefit from capital account liberalization?," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 10(2), pages 283-319, March.
    5. Gilad Aharonovitz & James Miller, 2008. "Are Net FDI Flows and Reversals of Capital Flows a Result of Output Growth?," Working Papers 2009-05, School of Economic Sciences, Washington State University.
    6. Kose, M. Ayhan & Prasad, Eswar S. & Terrones, Marco E., 2006. "How do trade and financial integration affect the relationship between growth and volatility?," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(1), pages 176-202, June.
    7. Thomas Barnebeck Andersen & Finn Tarp, 2003. "Financial liberalization, financial development and economic growth in LDCs," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 15(2), pages 189-209.
    8. Hoggarth, Glenn & Reis, Ricardo & Saporta, Victoria, 2002. "Costs of banking system instability: Some empirical evidence," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 26(5), pages 825-855, May.
    9. Xiuping Hua & Anders C. Johansson & Xun Wang, 2017. "National and regional financial openness in China," Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(2), pages 127-140, April.
    10. Cornia, Giovanni Andrea & Rosignoli, Stefano & Tiberti, Luca, 2007. "Globalisation and health: impact pathways and recent evidence," Center for Global, International and Regional Studies, Working Paper Series qt2358z815, Center for Global, International and Regional Studies, UC Santa Cruz.
    11. Jorge Ponce & Magdalena Tubio, 2010. "Estabilidad financiera: conceptos básicos," Documentos de trabajo 2010004, Banco Central del Uruguay.
    12. Gabriel Mougani, 2012. "Working Paper 144 - An Analysis of the Impact of Financial Integration on Economic Activity and Macroeconomic Volatility in Africa within the Financial Globalization Context," Working Paper Series 375, African Development Bank.
    13. Daniel Kapp & Marco Vega, 2014. "Real output costs of financial crises: A loss distribution approach," Cuadernos de Economía - Spanish Journal of Economics and Finance, Asociación Cuadernos de Economía, vol. 37(103), pages 13-28, Abril.
    14. Domac, Ilker & Martinez Peria, Maria Soledad, 2003. "Banking crises and exchange rate regimes: is there a link?," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(1), pages 41-72, October.
    15. Frederic S. Mishkin, 2007. "Is Financial Globalization Beneficial?," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 39(2-3), pages 259-294, March.
    16. Jeffrey A. Frankel, 2010. "Monetary Policy in Emerging Markets: A Survey," NBER Working Papers 16125, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Sebastian Edwards, 2007. "Capital Controls, Sudden Stops, and Current Account Reversals," NBER Chapters, in: Capital Controls and Capital Flows in Emerging Economies: Policies, Practices, and Consequences, pages 73-120, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Eduardo Wiesner, 2008. "The Political Economy of Macroeconomic Policy Reform in Latin America," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 12913.
    19. Bekaert, Geert & Harvey, Campbell R. & Lundblad, Christian, 2011. "Financial Openness and Productivity," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 1-19, January.
    20. Hutchison, Michael M & Noy, Ilan, 2005. "How Bad Are Twins? Output Costs of Currency and Banking Crises," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 37(4), pages 725-752, August.

    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:taf:irapec:v:18:y:2004:i:1:p:1-22. 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/CIRA20 .

    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.