Credible Commitments and Investment: Does Opportunistic Ability or Incentive Matter?

Private investment increases in a cross-country panel when formal institutions (e.g., term limits) do not constrain executives' planning horizons. This evidence is consistent with institutions that encourage reputation-building checking opportunistic incentives and extends evidence from domestic public choice applications to an international political economy setting. In addition, investment exhibits a nonmonotonic relationship with a polity's veto players. This relationship may reflect trade-offs between constituents' monitoring-capacity and agents' opportunistic ability. It may also highlight a channel through which lock-in effects retard neoclassical convergence and thus motivate different normative prescriptions than those emerging from contributions where institutions and real activity must exhibit a monotonic relationship. (JEL D72, D78, E61) Copyright 2003, Oxford University Press.