IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/qmw/qmwecw/877.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Economic Uncertainty and Structural Reforms

Author

Listed:
  • Alessandra Bonfiglioli

    (Queen Mary University of London)

  • Gino Gancia

    (Queen Mary University of London)

Abstract

Does economic uncertainty promote the implementation of structural reforms? We answer this question using one of the most exhaustive cross-country panel data set on reforms in six major areas and measuring economic uncertainty with stock market volatility. To address endogeneity concerns, we propose various identification strategies, instrumenting uncertainty with world shocks to volatility and with natural disasters, political coups and revolutions. Across all specifications, we find that uncertainty has a positive and significant effect on the adoption of reforms. This result is robust to the inclusion of a large number of controls, such as political variables, economic variables, crisis indicators, and a host of country, reform and time fixed effects.

Suggested Citation

  • Alessandra Bonfiglioli & Gino Gancia, 2018. "Economic Uncertainty and Structural Reforms," Working Papers 877, Queen Mary University of London, School of Economics and Finance.
    • Handle: RePEc:qmw:qmwecw:877
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.qmul.ac.uk/sef/media/econ/research/workingpapers/2018/wp877.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Giavazzi, Francesco & Tabellini, Guido, 2005. "Economic and political liberalizations," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(7), pages 1297-1330, October.
    2. S. Borağan Aruoba & Allan Drazen & Razvan Vlaicu, 2019. "A Structural Model Of Electoral Accountability," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 60(2), pages 517-545, May.
    3. Paola Giuliano & Prachi Mishra & Antonio Spilimbergo, 2013. "Democracy and Reforms: Evidence from a New Dataset," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(4), pages 179-204, October.
    4. Sam Peltzman, 1992. "Voters as Fiscal Conservatives," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(2), pages 327-361.
    5. Bonfiglioli, Alessandra & Favero, Carlo A., 2005. "Explaining co-movements between stock markets: The case of US and Germany," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 24(8), pages 1299-1316, December.
    6. Shi, Min & Svensson, Jakob, 2006. "Political budget cycles: Do they differ across countries and why?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(8-9), pages 1367-1389, September.
    7. Mariano Tommasi & Andrés Velasco, 1996. "Where are we in the political economy of reform?," Journal of Economic Policy Reform, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 1(2), pages 187-238.
    8. Andreas Müller & Kjetil Storesletten & Fabrizio Zilibotti, 2016. "The Political Color Of Fiscal Responsibility," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 14(1), pages 252-302, February.
    9. Cukierman, Alex & Tommasi, Mariano, 1998. "When Does It Take a Nixon to Go to China?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(1), pages 180-197, March.
    10. Dreher, Axel, 2006. "IMF and economic growth: The effects of programs, loans, and compliance with conditionality," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 34(5), pages 769-788, May.
    11. Giacomo A. M. Ponzetto & Maria Petrova & Ruben Enikolopov, 2008. "The Dracula effect: voter information and trade policy," Economics Working Papers 1296, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Oct 2020.
    12. David Bloom & David Canning & Günther Fink & Jocelyn Finlay, 2009. "Fertility, female labor force participation, and the demographic dividend," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 14(2), pages 79-101, June.
    13. James M. Snyder & David Strömberg, 2010. "Press Coverage and Political Accountability," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 118(2), pages 355-408, April.
    14. Abdul Abiad & Ashoka Mody, 2005. "Financial Reform: What Shakes It? What Shapes It?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 66-88, March.
    15. Acemoglu,Daron & Robinson,James A., 2009. "Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521671422, October.
    16. Alberto Alesina & Silvia Ardagna & Vincenzo Galasso, 2011. "The Euro and Structural Reforms," Review of Economics and Institutions, Università di Perugia, vol. 2(1).
    17. Mr. Jonathan David Ostry & Mr. Alessandro Prati & Mr. Antonio Spilimbergo, 2009. "Structural Reforms and Economic Performance in Advanced and Developing Countries," IMF Occasional Papers 2009/003, International Monetary Fund.
    18. Mr. A. J Hamann & Mr. Alessandro Prati, 2002. "Why Do Many Disinflations Fail? the Importance of Luck, Timing, and Political Institutions," IMF Working Papers 2002/228, International Monetary Fund.
    19. Alberto Alesina & Silvia Ardagna & Francesco Trebbi, 2006. "Who Adjusts and When?The Political Economy of Reforms," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 53(si), pages 1-1.
    20. Kristin J Forbes & Michael W Klein, 2015. "Pick Your Poison: The Choices and Consequences of Policy Responses to Crises," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 63(1), pages 197-237, May.
    21. Mathias Dewatripont & Ian Jewitt & Jean Tirole, 1999. "The Economics of Career Concerns, Part I: Comparing Information Structures," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 66(1), pages 183-198.
    22. Kristin J. Forbes & Roberto Rigobon, 2002. "No Contagion, Only Interdependence: Measuring Stock Market Comovements," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(5), pages 2223-2261, October.
    23. Alberto Alesina, 1987. "Macroeconomic Policy in a Two-Party System as a Repeated Game," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 102(3), pages 651-678.
    24. Mr. Fabian Valencia & Mr. Luc Laeven, 2012. "Systemic Banking Crises Database: An Update," IMF Working Papers 2012/163, International Monetary Fund.
    25. Alessandro Prati & Massimiliano Gaetano Onorato & Chris Papageorgiou, 2013. "Which Reforms Work and under What Institutional Environment? Evidence from a New Data Set on Structural Reforms," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 95(3), pages 946-968, July.
    26. Abdul Abiad & Ashoka Mody, 2005. "Financial Reform: What Shakes It? What Shapes It?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 66-88, March.
    27. Adi Brender & Allan Drazen, 2008. "How Do Budget Deficits and Economic Growth Affect Reelection Prospects? Evidence from a Large Panel of Countries," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(5), pages 2203-2220, December.
    28. Mathias Dewatripont & Ian Jewitt & Jean Tirole, 1999. "The Economics of Career Concerns, Part II: Application to Missions and Accountability of Government Agencies," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 66(1), pages 199-217.
    29. Allan Drazen & William Easterly, 2001. "Do Crises Induce Reform? Simple Empirical Tests of Conventional Wisdom," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 13(2), pages 129-157, July.
    30. J. Lawrence Broz & Maya J. Duru & Jeffry A. Frieden, 2016. "Policy Responses to Balance-of-Payments Crises: The Role of Elections," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 27(2), pages 207-227, April.
    31. Torsten Persson & Guido Tabellini, 2002. "Political Economics: Explaining Economic Policy," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262661314, April.
    32. Giacomo A. M. Ponzetto, 2011. "Heterogeneous Information and Trade Policy," 2011 Meeting Papers 189, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    33. Atif Mian & Amir Sufi & Francesco Trebbi, 2014. "Resolving Debt Overhang: Political Constraints in the Aftermath of Financial Crises," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 6(2), pages 1-28, April.
    34. Alberto Alesina & Roberto Perotti & José Tavares, 1998. "The Political Economy of Fiscal Adjustments," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 29(1), pages 197-266.
    35. Jens Høj & Vincenzo Galasso & Giuseppe Nicoletti & Thai-Thanh Dang, 2006. "The Political Economy of Structural Reform: Empirical Evidence from OECD Countries," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 501, OECD Publishing.
    36. Fernandez, Raquel & Rodrik, Dani, 1991. "Resistance to Reform: Status Quo Bias in the Presence of Individual-Specific Uncertainty," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(5), pages 1146-1155, December.
    37. Mathias Dewatripont & Ian Jewitt & Jean Tirole, 1999. "The Economics of Career Concerns, Part I: Comparing Information Structures," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 66(1), pages 183-198.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Fornero, Elsa & Lo Prete, Anna, 2019. "Voting in the aftermath of a pension reform: the role of financial literacy," Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, Cambridge University Press, vol. 18(1), pages 1-30, January.
    2. Campos, Nauro F. & Eichenauer, Vera Z. & Sturm, Jan-Egbert, 2020. "Close encounters of the European kind: Economic integration, sectoral heterogeneity and structural reforms," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    3. Vera Eichenauer & Ronald Indergand & Isabel Z. Martínez & Christoph Sax, 2020. "Constructing Daily Economic Sentiment Indices Based on Google Trends," KOF Working papers 20-484, KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich.
    4. Cacciatore, Matteo & Duval, Romain & Fiori, Giuseppe & Ghironi, Fabio, 2016. "Market reforms in the time of imbalance," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 69-93.
    5. Mirela Miescu, 2019. "Uncertainty shocks in emerging economies," Working Papers 277077821, Lancaster University Management School, Economics Department.
    6. Alessandra Bonfiglioli & Rosario Crinò & Gino Gancia, 2022. "Economic uncertainty and structural reforms: Evidence from stock market volatility," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 13(2), pages 467-504, May.
    7. Romp, Ward & Beetsma, Roel, 2023. "OECD pension reform: The role of demographic trends and the business cycle," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    8. Shuanping Dai & Guanzhong Yang, 2020. "Does Social Inducement Lead to Higher Open Innovation Investment? An Experimental Study," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(5), pages 1-17, March.
    9. Michael Ryan, 2020. "An Anchor in Stormy Seas: Does Reforming Economic Institutions Reduce Uncertainty? Evidence from New Zealand," Working Papers in Economics 20/11, University of Waikato.
    10. Masuch, Klaus & Anderton, Robert & Setzer, Ralph & Benalal, Nicholai, 2018. "Structural policies in the euro area," Occasional Paper Series 210, European Central Bank.
    11. Beetsma, Roel & Romp, Ward & van Maurik, Ron, 2017. "What Drives Pension Reform Measures in the OECD? Evidence based on a New Comprehensive Dataset and Theory," CEPR Discussion Papers 12313, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Alessandra Bonfiglioli & Rosario Crinò & Gino Gancia, 2022. "Economic uncertainty and structural reforms: Evidence from stock market volatility," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 13(2), pages 467-504, May.
    2. Alessandra Bonfiglioli and Gino Gancia, 2010. "The Political Cost of Reforms," Working Papers 507, Barcelona School of Economics.
    3. Alessandra Bonfiglioli & Gino Gancia, 2010. "The political cost of reforms (preliminar version of working paper number 1360: Uncertainty, electoral incentives and political myopia)," Economics Working Papers 1250, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Jun 2011.
    4. Romain Duval & Davide Furceri & Jakob Miethe, 2021. "Robust political economy correlates of major product and labor market reforms in advanced economies: Evidence from BAMLE for logit models," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 36(1), pages 98-124, January.
    5. Alessandra Bonfiglioli & Gino Gancia, 2013. "Uncertainty, Electoral Incentives and Political Myopia," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 0, pages 373-400, May.
    6. Alesina, A. & Passalacqua, A., 2016. "The Political Economy of Government Debt," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 2599-2651, Elsevier.
    7. Davide Romelli, 2022. "The political economy of reforms in Central Bank design: evidence from a new dataset," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 37(112), pages 641-688.
    8. Nan Li & Chris Papageorgiou & Tong Xu & Tao Zha, 2021. "The S-curve: Understanding the Dynamics of Worldwide Financial Liberalization," NBER Working Papers 28994, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Gunes Gokmen & Tommaso Nannicini & Massimiliano Gaetano Onorato & Chris Papageorgiou, 2021. "Policies in Hard Times: Assessing the Impact of Financial Crises on Structural Reforms," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 131(638), pages 2529-2552.
    10. Beetsma, Roel & Romp, Ward & van Maurik, Ron, 2017. "What Drives Pension Reform Measures in the OECD? Evidence based on a New Comprehensive Dataset and Theory," CEPR Discussion Papers 12313, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    11. Campos, Nauro F. & De Grauwe, Paul & Ji, Yuemei, 2023. "Structural reforms and economic performance: the experience of advanced economies," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 120870, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    12. Vincenzo Galasso, 2014. "The role of political partisanship during economic crises," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 158(1), pages 143-165, January.
    13. Paola Giuliano & Prachi Mishra & Antonio Spilimbergo, 2013. "Democracy and Reforms: Evidence from a New Dataset," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(4), pages 179-204, October.
    14. Saka, Orkun & Campos, Nauro & De Grauwe, Paul & Ji, Yuemei & Martelli, Angelo, 2019. "Financial crises and liberalization: progress or reversals?," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 118931, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    15. Giuliano, Paola & Mishra, Prachi & Spilimbergo, Antonio, 2009. "Democracy and Reforms," IZA Discussion Papers 4032, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    16. Saka, Orkun & Ji, Yuemei & De Grauwe, Paul, 2020. "Financial policymaking after crises: public vs. private interests," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 118861, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    17. repec:zbw:bofitp:2021_010 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Orkun Saka & Yuemei Ji & Paul De Grauwe, 2021. "Financial Policymaking after Crises: Public vs. Private Interests," CESifo Working Paper Series 9131, CESifo.
    19. Saka, Orkun & Ji, Yuemei & De Grauwe, Paul, 2021. "Financial policymaking after crises : Public vs. private interests," BOFIT Discussion Papers 10/2021, Bank of Finland, Institute for Economies in Transition.
    20. Saka, Orkun & Ji, Yuemei & De Grauwe, Paul, 2021. "Financial policymaking after crises: Public vs. private interests," BOFIT Discussion Papers 10/2021, Bank of Finland Institute for Emerging Economies (BOFIT).
    21. Nauro F. Campos & Paul De Grauwe & Yuemei Ji, 2017. "Structural Reforms, Growth and Inequality: An Overview of Theory, Measurement and Evidence," CESifo Working Paper Series 6812, CESifo.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Reforms; Uncertainty;

    JEL classification:

    • E02 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General - - - Institutions and the Macroeconomy
    • E60 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - General
    • L51 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy - - - Economics of Regulation

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:qmw:qmwecw:877. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Nicholas Owen (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deqmwuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.