文档介绍：Econometrica, Vol. 70, No. 3 (May, 2002), 883–905
DO POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS SHAPE ECONOMIC POLICY?
By Torsten Persson1
Do political institutions shape economic policy? I argue that this question should natu-
rally appeal to economists. Moreover, the answer is in the affirmative, both in theory and
in practice. In particular, recent theoretical work predicts systematic effects of electoral
rules and political regimes on the size position of government spending. Results
from ongoing empirical work indicate that such effects are indeed present in the data.
Some empirical results are consistent with theoretical predictions: presidential regimes
have smaller governments and countries with majoritarian elections have smaller welfare-
state programs and less corruption. Other results present puzzles for future research: the
adjustment to economic events appears highly institution-dependent, as does the timing
and nature of the electoral cycle.
Keywords: Fiscal policy, size of government, corruption, electoral cycles, electoral
rules, government regimes.
1 initial remarks
In the last five to ten years, political economy—or political economics,
as I prefer to call it—has been a rapidly growing field. As the label suggests, this
field deals with issues related to politics using the tools of modern economics.
The most recent work is attractive in that it draws on several traditions: the
older public-choice school, the rational-choice school in political science, and
the equilibrium theory of macroeconomic policy. Collected works, monographs,
and textbooks have now started to appear, drawing on the contributions in the
last decade. One such piece is Persson and Tabellini (2000a); others include
Mueller (1997), Austen-Smith and Banks (1999), Drazen (2000), and Grossman
and Helpman (2001).
An obvious motivation for this es from observing economic pol-
icy es. Looking across time and place, one observes large differences in
policy, but also