Conflicts, Interest Groups, and Politics in Structural Reforms

Avi Ben-Bassat

Journal of Law and Economics, 2011, vol. 54, issue 4, 937 - 952

Abstract: The present study is, to my knowledge, the first to examine the balance of power among all players influencing the adoption of structural reforms: politicians, regulators, and interest groups. Special attention is devoted to the effect of conflicts between regulators. Professional conflicts signal to politicians that there is a high level of risk in implementing a given reform, thereby weakening their confidence in it. Conflicts also benefit interest groups, increasing their effectiveness vis-à-vis politicians. Using a unique data set on 32 attempts to reform Israel's financial market, I find that the greater the extent of conflicts among regulators and the greater the intensity of the opposition of interest groups, the lower the probability that a reform will be approved. These conflicts, together with the strength of interest groups, have led to repeated attempts to introduce reforms, so that it takes, on average, 10 years for a reform to be adopted.

Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/658672 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/658672 (text/html)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

Related works:
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:ucp:jlawec:doi:10.1086/658672

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Law and Economics from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().