 Government ideology and economic freedomVitor Castro and Rodrigo Martins Journal of Comparative Economics, 2021, vol. 49, issue 1, 73-91 Abstract: This paper tests the widespread belief that right-wing governments tend to promote economic freedom while left-wing ones prefer more control over the economy. Using annual data for 106 countries over the period 1975-2015 and a two-step system GMM estimator, this study shows that right-wing governments are indeed more prone to promote economic freedom and to deregulate the economy. It also finds that this effect seems to be stronger in developing/emerging economies than in more developed countries. Moreover, the analysis of the broad dimensions of economic freedom indicates that right-wing governments tend to act by improving monetary soundness and freedom to trade internationally and by easing regulations that restrict entry into markets. Mainstream left-wing governments do not seem to affect economic freedom, however populist left-wing parties, when in office, are found to have a detrimental effect. Keywords: Economic Freedom; Government Ideology; Economic Deregulation; GMM estimation (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jcecon:v:49:y:2021:i:1:p:73-91 DOI: 10.1016/j.jce.2020.07.007 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Comparative Economics is currently edited by D. Berkowitz and G. Roland More articles in Journal of Comparative Economics from Elsevier |
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