Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/51432
Year of Publication: 
2009
Series/Report no.: 
Working Paper No. 676
Publisher: 
Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department, Washington, DC
Abstract: 
While economists have tended to focus on specific public policies when developing recommendations, the achievement of welfare objectives might depend more on the quality of policies than their content. This paper develops several measures of the qualities of policies across countries, arguing that the quality of public policies depends on each polity's ability to strike intertemporal transactions necessary to develop and sustain effective policies. The analytical framework developed here indicates that this ability depends on several characteristics of political institutions, such as congressional capabilities, judicial independence, and bureaucratic independence and professionalism. The empirical evidence presented supports this idea. The measures of policy quality developed here could be utilized for other purposes, including the determination of conditions under which more public spending in a given area is likely to generate the desired outcomes.
Subjects: 
Political institutions
Public policies
Government capabilities
Intertemporal cooperation
Development
Policy index
Credibility
Judicial independence
Party institutionalization
Congress capabilities
Cabinet stability
JEL: 
D72
D78
H10
H50
O10
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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