Political Reforms and Public Policy: Evidence from Agricultural and Food Policies

This paper studies the effect of political regime transitions on public policy using a new data set on global agricultural and food policies over a 50-year period (including data from 74 developing and developed countries over the 1955–2005 period). We find evidence that democratization leads to a reduction of agricultural taxation, an increase in agricultural subsidization, or both. The empirical findings are consistent with the predictions of the median voter model because political transitions occurred primarily in countries with a majority of farmers. The results are robust to different specifications, estimation approaches, and variable definitions.

Bibliographic Details

Main Authors:	Olper, Alessandro, Fałkowski, Jan, Swinnen, Johan
Format:	Journal Article biblioteca
Language:	en_US
Published:	Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank 2014-01-23
Subjects:	decision maker, democracy, democratic regime, developing country, dictatorial regime, economic liberalization, election, executive branch, financial support, income, political economy, political power, political regime, political rights, political systems, public policy,
Online Access:	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/22556
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