Investigating capitalism aversion

Why not a political Coase theorem? Social conflict, commitment and politics

Augustin Landier, David Thesmar and Mathias Thoenig

Economic Policy, 2008, vol. 23, issue 55, 466-497

Abstract: There are two non-mutually exclusive theories of individual variations in pro-capitalism opinions. The first theory views pro-capitalism opinions as self-serving: Individuals are opposed to market forces when they threaten their economic rents. The second theory views differences in such opinions as reflecting genuine disagreement on the efficiency of various economic systems. Using individual data, we investigate the validity of both theories, focusing on attitudes toward private ownership, private profit and competition. We find evidence that the first theory explains some of the variations in attitudes. However, consistent with the second theory, we also find evidence of individual learning about the comparative virtues of economic systems. The learning is slow, home-biased and path-dependent. Long-run cultural and historical determinants of pro-market attitudes, such as religion and legal origins, explain more than 40% of the cross-country variations in capitalism aversion. Last, we provide tentative evidence that at the country level, pro-market opinions affect the nature of economic institutions. Our results suggest that the feasibility of economic reform does not depend solely on its impact on the distribution of rents; ideological a-prioris are likely to be important as well.— Augustin Landier, David Thesmar and Mathias Thoenig

Date: 2008
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (34)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/j.1468-0327.2008.00205.x (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Investigating capitalism aversion (2008)
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:oup:ecpoli:v:23:y:2008:i:55:p:466-497.

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Policy is currently edited by Ghazala Azmat, Roberto Galbiati, Isabelle Mejean and Moritz Schularick

More articles in Economic Policy from CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po Contact information at EDIRC., CES Contact information at EDIRC., MSH Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().