Strength in Numbers in Policymaking

The convergence of policy choices across governments is often rationalized as the outcome of countries learning from each others experiences. However, policy convergence can also arise if policymakers fear being alone in their decisions, and have career concerns should they subsequently be deemed wrong. We construct a new dataset on Canadian provincial public health insurance decisions for pharmaceuticals and develop empirical tests for social learning and career concerns. We find that social learning has little effect on policy choices while career concerns are a significant driver of policy convergence. Together these findings have direct implications for policymaking decentralization.