Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Political Institutions and Economic Organization

政治学博士论文研究：政治制度与经济组织

• 批准号: 0819499
• 负责人: J. Lawrence Broz
• 金额: $ 1.2万
• 依托单位: University of California-San Diego
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2008
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2008-10-01 至 2010-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0819499&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Political; Science

This project measures the effect of political democratization on private sector economic organization in Chile and Mexico using firm- and industry-level data. Economic organization is defined broadly to include the organization of power within firms (corporate governance), and the degree of competition between firms. Economic organization matters because it influences a country's overall competitiveness and its prospects for economic development.The arguments establishing a long-run relationship between political institutions and economic development are well-known (Engerman and Sokoloff, 1997; Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson, 2001), and recent scholarship ties democratization to growth using sophisticated panel data techniques (Persson and Tabellini, 2006; Papaioannou and Siourounis, 2007). However, both of these literatures leave intermediate links in the causal chain unexplored. This project seeks to fill a gap in the literature by studying the effects of political institutions on economic organization.The intellectual merit of the project derives from its unique research design and theoretical framework. It extends the current research by studying how changes in political institutions within countries affect corporate governance and market structure using a comparative research design known as an interrupted time series with switching replications (Shadish, Cook, and Campbell, 2001). The design exploits the alternating periods of democratization among the two countries: Mexican firms serve as the "control" group during Chile's democratization, and subsequently represent the "treated" group during the late 1990's, when Chilean firms become the "control" group.This design is particularly strong at approximating the effect of democratization on economic organization for several reasons. Most importantly, rather than studying a country-level dependent variable such as economic growth, this research employs firm and industry-level dependent variables, which enable the researcher to account for alternative explanations related to initial sectoral or technological heterogeneity. It also allows for an exploration of a potentially differential impact of political reform across different industries or sectors (as in Aghion, Alesina, and Trebbi, 2007). Furthermore, the two countries are carefully chosen to follow a most-similar case design, which attempts to hold constant as many alternative explanations as possible. Most importantly for this project, economic reforms likely to affect economic organization occurred in Chile and Mexico at nearly the same time.This study integrates two components of economic organization that are often studied in isolation. Regarding corporate governance, my study will collect and analyze firm-level measures of ownership concentration and stock market capitalization. To measure the relationship between political institutions and economic competition, the study will collect and analyze concentration ratios, Herfindahl-Hirschman indices, and price-cost ratios. It makes sense to study corporate governance and market structure under a unified framework, since both components are governed by corporate laws and other institutions produced by national governments, which makes them subject to common pressures following political reform.The broad impact of the study includes a contribution to two important debates. First, it improves our knowledge of the determinants of private sector development in emerging markets by drawing attention to politics. A consensus view has that "institutions matter" for economic development in general, but little is known about which specific institutions are particularly important, and channels linking them to growth. Second, this project contributes to broader debates about democracy (see, for example, Acemoglu and Robinson, 2006). For instance, evidence of changes in corporate organization following periods of democratic reform would provide strong support for the proposition that democracy reduces the economic power of special interest groups. By contrast, a null result would suggest that de jure political institutions such as democracy are insufficient for economic change due to the substantial de facto political power of entrenched elites.

该项目利用公司和行业层面的数据，衡量政治民主化对智利和墨西哥私营部门经济组织的影响。经济组织的定义很广，包括企业内部的权力组织（公司治理）和企业之间的竞争程度。经济组织之所以重要，是因为它影响一个国家的整体竞争力和经济发展前景。在政治制度和经济发展之间建立长期关系的论点是众所周知的（Engerman和Sokoloff，1997年; Acemoglu，约翰逊和罗宾逊，2001年），最近的奖学金联系民主化的增长，使用复杂的面板数据技术（Rehson和Tabellini，2006; Papaioannou和Siourounis，2007）。然而，这两个文献都留下了因果链中未探索的中间环节。本项目旨在通过研究政治制度对经济组织的影响来填补文献中的空白。本项目的智力价值来自其独特的研究设计和理论框架。它扩展了目前的研究，通过研究国家内部政治制度的变化如何影响公司治理和市场结构，使用一种比较研究设计，称为中断的时间序列与切换复制（Shadish，库克和坎贝尔，2001年）。该设计利用了两国民主化的交替时期：在智利民主化期间，墨西哥企业充当“控制”组，随后在20世纪90年代后期，智利企业成为“控制”组，代表“被对待”组。由于几个原因，该设计在近似民主化对经济组织的影响方面特别强大。最重要的是，而不是研究一个国家一级的因变量，如经济增长，本研究采用了公司和行业一级的因变量，使研究人员能够解释与初始部门或技术异质性有关的其他解释。它还允许探索政治改革对不同行业或部门的潜在差异影响（如Aghion，Alesina和Trebbi，2007）。此外，这两个国家是精心挑选的，遵循最相似的案例设计，试图保持尽可能多的替代解释不变。最重要的是，智利和墨西哥几乎同时发生了可能影响经济组织的经济改革。本研究将经济组织的两个组成部分结合起来，这两个组成部分通常被孤立地研究。在公司治理方面，收集并分析了所有权集中度和股票市场资本化的公司层面指标。为了衡量政治制度与经济竞争之间的关系，本研究将收集和分析集中率、赫芬达尔-赫希曼指数和价格成本比。在统一的框架下研究公司治理和市场结构是有意义的，因为这两个组成部分都受到国家政府制定的公司法和其他制度的约束，这使得它们在政治改革后面临共同的压力。该研究的广泛影响包括对两个重要辩论的贡献。首先，它通过引起对政治的关注，提高了我们对新兴市场私营部门发展决定因素的认识。一种共识认为，“体制问题”对一般经济发展至关重要，但人们对哪些具体体制特别重要以及将它们与增长联系起来的渠道知之甚少。第二，该项目有助于更广泛地讨论民主问题（例如，见Acemoglu和罗宾逊，2006年）。例如，民主改革时期之后公司组织发生变化的证据将为民主削弱特殊利益集团的经济力量这一命题提供强有力的支持。相比之下，无效的结果表明，由于根深蒂固的精英阶层拥有实质性的事实上的政治权力，民主等法律上的政治制度不足以实现经济变革。