The paper investigates empirically the interaction between economic growth performance and political institutions in producing free-market reform. In particular, we explore whether political regime types shape systematically government policy responses to good or bad growth performance,...

Long-term beneficial welfare state reforms not only face opposition from powerful insiders and beneficiaries of the system in place. While potential losers from a policy change are often relatively easy to spot, ewll-designed reforms generate mostly diffuse gains, and the potential winners are...

Empirical research has shown that both more economic freedom and a higher stability of policy variables are supportive for economic growth. Thus, the path of policy liberalization may have a considerable influence on a nation's growth performance. Using the Fraser-index of economic freedom, this...