TY  - JOUR
AU  - Mulligan,Casey B.
AU  - Sala-i-Martin,Xavier
AU  - Gil,Ricard
TI  - Do Democracies Have Different Public Policies than Nondemocracies?
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 10040
PY  - 2003
Y2  - October 2003
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10040
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10040.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Casey Mulligan
University of Chicago
Department of Economics
1126 East 59th Street
Chicago, IL  60637
Tel: 773/702-9017
Fax: 773/702-8490
E-Mail: c-mulligan@uchicago.edu

Xavier Sala-i-Martin
Department of Economics
Columbia University
420 West 118th Street, 1005
New York, NY 10027
Tel: 212/854-7055
Fax: 212/854-8059
E-Mail: xs23@columbia.edu
AB  - Estimates of democracy's effect on the public sector are obtained from comparisons of 142 countries over the years 1960-90. Based on three tenets of voting theory -- that voting mutes policy preference intensity, political power is equally distributed in democracies, and the form of voting processes is important -- we expect democracy to affect policies that redistribute, or economically favor the political leadership, or enhance efficiency. We do not find such differences. Instead democracies are less likely to use policies that limit competition for public office. Alternative modeling approaches emphasize the degree of competition, and deemphasize the form or even existence of voting processes.
ER  -