A long-standing concern in political economy is whether outcomes are efficient in political equilibrium. Recent contributions have examined the efficiency/inefficiency of policy choices from a theoretical point of view. The aim of this paper is to examine such issue empirically. Building on...

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...