Institutions, volatility and investment

Timothy Besley and Hannes Mueller

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Countries with strong executive constraints have lower growth volatility but similar average growth to those with weak constraints. This paper argues that this may explain the relationship between executive constraints and inflows of foreign investment. It uses a a novel dataset of Dutch sector-level investments between 1983 and 2012 to explore this issue. It formulates an economic model of investment and uses data on the mean and variance of productivity growth to explain the relationship between investment inflows and executive constraints. The model can account for the aggregate change in inflows when strong executive constraints are adopted in terms of the reduction in the volatility in productivity growth. The data and model together suggest a natural way of thinking about country-level heterogeneity in investment inflows following the adoption of strong executive constraints.

Keywords: foreign investment; volatility risk; executive constraints; democracy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F3 G3 N0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 46 pages
Date: 2018-06-01
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Published in Journal of the European Economic Association, 1, June, 2018, 16(3), pp. 604 - 649. ISSN: 1542-4766

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/69586/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Institutions, Volatility, and Investment (2018)
Working Paper: Institutions, Volatility and Investment (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:69586

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