Political Polarization and the Size of Government

Erik Lindqvist () and Robert Östling ()
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Robert Östling: Institute for International Economic Studies, Stockholm University, Postal: SE-106 91 , Stockholm, Sweden, http://www.iies.su.se/~ostling/

No 628, Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance from Stockholm School of Economics

Abstract: We study the effect of political polarization on public spending using the dispersion of self-reported political preferences as our measure of polarization. Political polarization is strongly associated with smaller government in democratic countries, but there is no relationship between polarization and the size of government in undemocratic countries. The results are robust to a large set of control variables, including GDP per capita and income inequality.

Keywords: Political polarization; social cohesion; size of government; redistribution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H10 H20 H41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pbe, nep-pol and nep-soc
Date: 2006-05-19, Revised 2009-08-18
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Related works:
Working Paper: Political Polarization and the Size of Government (2008)
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:hastef:0628

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