with Roman Horvath
December 2011
Forthcoming European Journal of Political Economy (here)
Measurement issues are one of the most important reasons for the highly
contrasting findings in
the literature on the effects of structural reforms on growth. This paper
puts forward improved measures
of economic liberalization across countries and over time, focusing on
the unique experience of the
transition economies. The paper shows that structural reforms, according
to these new measures, follow
a much richer dynamics than the one suggested by existing indexes. It also
finds that such improved
measures also generate stronger links with current theoretical work: in
standard growth specifications,
it finds that these new measures of reform have larger and more precisely
estimated effects than
the existing ones.
Download working paper version: CEPR DP IZA DP
Data set CH3 reform indexes is available here