EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

On the Efficacy of Reforms: Policy Tinkering, Institutional Change and Entrepreneurship

Dani Rodrik and Murat Iyigun

No 4399, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: We analyse the interplay of policy reform and entrepreneurship in a model where investment decisions and policy outcomes are both subject to uncertainty. The production costs of non-traditional activities are unknown and can only be discovered by entrepreneurs who make sunk investments. The policy-maker has access to two strategies: ?policy tinkering,? which corresponds to a new draw from a pre-existing policy regime, and ?institutional reform,? which corresponds to a draw from a different regime and imposes an adjustment cost on incumbent firms. Tinkering and institutional reform both have their respective advantages. Institutional reforms work best in settings where entrepreneurial activity is weak, while it is likely to produce disappointing outcomes where the cost discovery process is vibrant. We present cross-country evidence that strongly supports such a conditional relationship.

Keywords: Growth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O10 O40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-06
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP4399 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: On the Efficacy of Reforms: Policy Tinkering, Institutional Change, and Entrepreneurship (2004) Downloads
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:4399

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP4399

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CEPR ().

 
Page updated 2026-05-19
Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:4399