Political Partisanship and Financial Reforms in Advanced Countries

Applying regressions on a sample of 18 OECD countries from 1970 to 2009 using new indicators, we find that right-wing governments liberalize more the financial sector that left-wing governments. We show that if a left-wing government accepts to liberalize the financial sector, an increase of social security expenditures can facilitate the adoption of a new legislation in the financial sector. To estimate the impact of the government partisan affiliation on the corporate governance legislation, we use a probit model and a conditional Cox model in gap time in 16 OECD over the 1970-2009 period. Statistically, we find that right-wing governments enhance more pro-shareholder policies.