Political Data for Applied Political Economy Research

No 43, Working Papers from University of Milano-Bicocca, Department of Economics

Abstract: The availability of appropriate empirical measures to represent political and institutional factors is a crucial issue in the applied political economy research. This paper is intended as a contribution to the collection and circulation of political data. Having been involved for quite a considerable time in projects on the empirical analysis of political economy models, I have in the end assembled a data-set for the group of western European countries that includes a variety (about 40) of indicators. Some of these indicators have been previously used in the literature, but others are innovative. The categories of variables in the data set are presented and two econometric applications discussed. The first application is an analysis of the determinants of government duration. Differently from most of the literature in this area, the specification of the statistical model is theory-based and not driven by an inductive approach. The second application is an analysis of the determinants of government spending decisions. Again, specific theoretical predictions are tested. The focus is on the role of the ideological (and numerical) fragmentation of the government. The data-set will be soon made available on the WWW and, for the time being, is available from the author upon request.

Keywords: political economy; data collection; government duration; government expenditure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C80 D72 D78 H50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 47 pages
Date: 2001-07, Revised 2001-07
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mib:wpaper:43

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