TY - JOUR AU - Edwards, Sebastian AU - Tabellini, Guido TI - Political Instability, Political Weakness and Inflation: An Empirical Analysis JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 3721 PY - 1991 Y2 - May 1991 DO - 10.3386/w3721 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w3721 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w3721.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Sebastian Edwards UCLA Anderson Graduate School of Management 110 Westwood Plaza, Suite C508 Box 951481 Los Angeles, CA 90095-1481 Tel: 310/206-6797 Fax: 310/206-5825 E-Mail: sebastian.edwards@anderson.ucla.edu Guido Tabellini IGIER Universita' Bocconi Via Roentgen 1 20136 Milano Italy Tel: 39 2 583 6 3305 E-Mail: guido.tabellini@unibocconi.it AB - In this paper we analyze empirically the most important implications of two family political economy models of inflation: the "myopic? government approach and the "weak" government approach. In myopic government models inflation is the deliberate outcome of politicians strategic behavior, while in weak government models inflation is the unavoidable result of a political struggle between different factions. In testing the implications of these two models we use a new data set on political developments in 76 countries for the period 1971-1982. Using a number of alternative definitions of the inflation tax we find out that the data supports the implications of the myopic governments models; countries with a more unstable political environment tend to rely more heavily on the inflation tax. There is no evidence in favor of the weak government hypothesis. ER -