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The IMF and Economic Development
TLDR
In this article, the authors argue that governments enter IMF programs for economic and political reasons, and find that the effects are negative on economic growth and income distribution, and that the negative effects of IMF programs are mitigated for certain constituencies since programs also have distributional consequences.Abstract:
Why do governments turn to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and with what effects? This book argues that governments enter IMF programs for economic and political reasons, and finds that the effects are negative on economic growth and income distribution. By bringing in the IMF, governments gain political leverage - via conditionality - to push through unpopular policies. Note that if governments desiring conditions are more likely to participate, estimating program effects is not straightforward: one must control for the potentially unobserved political determinants of selection. This book addresses the selection problem using a dynamic bivariate version of the Heckman model analyzing cross-national time-series data. The main finding is that the negative effects of IMF programs on economic growth are mitigated for certain constituencies since programs also have distributional consequences. But IMF programs doubly hurt the least well off in society: they lower growth and shift the income distribution upward.read more
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The Globalization of Liberalization: Policy Diffusion in the International Political Economy
Beth A. Simmons,Zachary Elkins +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the adoption of liberal economic practices is highly clustered both temporally and spatially, and the authors hypothesize that this clustering might be due to processes of policy diffusion.
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Political Institutions under Dictatorship
TL;DR: The use of institutions to co-opt 4. Institutions and policies under dictatorship 5. Instit institutions and outcomes under dictatorship as mentioned in this paper 6. The world of dictatorial institutions and the survival of dictators
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Introduction: The International Diffusion of Liberalism
TL;DR: In a recent symposium on the diffusion of liberal policies and politics as mentioned in this paper, four distinct theories to explain how the prior choices of some countries and inter-national actors affect the subsequent behavior of others: coercion, competition, learn ing, and emulation.
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Why the Move to Free Trade? Democracy and Trade Policy in the Developing Countries
Helen V. Milner,Keiko Kubota +1 more
TL;DR: The authors argue that these two trends are related: democratization of the political system reduces the ability of governments to use trade barriers as a strategy for building political support, and that the liberalization of trade policy in many developing countries has helped foster the growth of these flows.
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Do Authoritarian Institutions Constrain? How Legislatures Affect Economic Growth and Investment
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore why authoritarian regimes create legislatures and then assess their effect on economic growth and investment, and find that binding legislatures have a positive impact on economic development and domestic investment.
References
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Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital
TL;DR: In this paper, the concept of social capital is introduced and illustrated, its forms are described, the social structural conditions under which it arises are examined, and it is used in an analys...
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Sample Selection Bias as a Specification Error
TL;DR: In this article, the bias that results from using non-randomly selected samples to estimate behavioral relationships as an ordinary specification error or "omitted variables" bias is discussed, and the asymptotic distribution of the estimator is derived.
Book
Foundations of Social Theory
TL;DR: In this article, a new approach to describing both stability and change in social systems by linking the behavior of individuals to organizational behavior is proposed. But the approach is not suitable for large-scale systems.
BookDOI
Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy
TL;DR: Putnam et al. as discussed by the authors analyzed the efficacy of these governments in such fields as agriculture, housing, and health services, revealing patterns of associationism, trust, and cooperation that facilitate good governance and economic prosperity.