Financial Crises and Liberalization: Progress or Reversals?

Orkun Saka (), Nauro Campos, Paul De Grauwe, Yuemei Ji () and Angelo Martelli ()
Additional contact information
Orkun Saka: University of London
Angelo Martelli: London School of Economics

No 12393, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Financial crisis can trigger policy reversals, i.e. they can lead to a process of re- regulation of financial markets. Using a recent comprehensive dataset on financial liberalization across 94 countries for the period between 1973 and 2015, we formally test the validity of this prediction for the member states of the European Union as well as for a global sample. We contribute by (a) using a new up-to-date dataset of reforms and crises and (b) subjecting it to a combination of difference-in-differences and local projection estimations. In the global sample, our findings consistently confirm that crises lead to a reversal of liberal reforms, suggesting that governments react to crises by re-regulating financial markets. However, in a dynamic setting with impulse-responses, we also find that these new regulations are only temporary and a liberalization process restarts a few years after a financial crisis. One decade later, financial markets have returned to their pre-crisis level of liberalization. In the EU sample, however, we do not find sufficient evidence to support these observations.

Keywords: financial reforms; financial crises; reform reversals; local projections (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G01 G28 P11 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 51 pages
Date: 2019-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-fmk
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published - published in: Campos, N., P. De Grauwe and Y. Ji (eds), Economic Growth and Structural Reforms in Europe, Cambridge University Press, 2020, 177 - 213

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Related works:
Working Paper: Financial Crises and Liberalisation: Progress or Reversals? (2019)
Working Paper: Financial crises and liberalization: progress or reversals? (2019)
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