While the mainstream of economic development theory focuses on the efficiency of policy measures, the role of the credibility of these measures is rarely analyzed. In this paper we argue that in less developed countries the problem of establishing the credibility of policy measures is at least...

Klaus Armingeon criticizes our paper "Distribution Effects of Opening up an Economy and Voting Behaviour: An Analysis Based on the Example of the Swiss Vote on the EEA" published in this journal in 1998. In this reply we argue that his critique is mainly due to a misinterpretation of the goal of...

Case studies and anecdotal evidence have suggested that uncertainty about policies, laws, and regulations has hampered development of the private sector in many developing countries. The authors present results from a new cross-country survey that provides comparable data on local...

The recent boom in cross-country growth analysis has renewed the empirical interest in political sources of economic growth. A large number of studies have tested political variables in growth regressions and a very heterogeneous set of variables has been proposed to measure economically...

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This paper analyses the connections between the redistributional effects of an opening up of the economy to foreign markets and individual voting behaviour. Theoretical considerations lead to the hypotheses that the losers will unambiguously vote against an opening of the economy at the polls...