The moderating effect of bureaucratic quality on the pricing of policy instability

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine how policy instability is priced in interest rates. Policy instability refers to the likelihood that the current policy will be changed in the future in the absence of political power shifts. Design/methodology/approach – Chinese government’s experimental policy-making approach provides an ideal set of frequent policy flip-flops which allows us to identify the effect of policy changes. Findings – Conditional on the bureaucratic quality of policymaking, a good-quality policy reversal is related to reductions in interest rate term spread and volatility; a bad-quality policy reversal is related to increases in the spread and volatility. The bureaucratic quality is multi-dimensional and the moderating effect is stronger on interest rates when it is measured more precisely. Originality/value – First, we can use the interest rate dynamics to infer the policy risk premium, which is a more objective market indicator of the bureaucratic quality of the policy change. Second, the study is among the first that documents the pricing of policy instability can be moderated by the bureaucratic quality. The results indicate that it is important for a government to be responsive and consistent in liberalizing the financial market. It will lead to reduced cost of capital and volatility for investors and firms in the economy. Third, given that the bureaucratic quality is multi-dimensional and produces stronger impact jointly, a country shall continue to improve on different aspects of the bureaucratic quality. Although the study is based on the empirical evidence from Chinese policy environment, the results can be broadly applied to any developing economies that intend to liberalize the market to spur economic growth.