Redistributive Promises and the Adoption of Economic Reform

This paper analyzes the relationship between economic reform and the democratic process to ask the following question: Does the likelihood of adoption of an economic reform increase with an increase in the efficiency benefits from that reform? This paper demonstrates that there exists a certain non-...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The American economic review 2003-03, Vol.93 (1), p.256-264
Main Authors: Jain, Sanjay, Mukand, Sharun W.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Candidates
Democracy
Distribution
Economic benefits
Economic efficiency
Economic models
Economic reform
Economics
Elections
Equilibrium
Government reform
Incumbents
Lobbying
Political candidates
Political reform
Politics
Probability distribution
Shorter Papers
Studies
Tax reform
Voting
Wages & salaries
Workers
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Summary:This paper analyzes the relationship between economic reform and the democratic process to ask the following question: Does the likelihood of adoption of an economic reform increase with an increase in the efficiency benefits from that reform? This paper demonstrates that there exists a certain non-monotonicity between the distribution of winners from economic reform and the probability of its adoption. An increase in the number of winners may lower, rather than increase, the likelihood of adoption of economic reform. In particular, even though reforms that benefit a minority or an overwhelming majority are adopted, reforms that benefit a smaller majority are not adopted.
ISSN:0002-8282
1944-7981
DOI:10.1257/000282803321455269