Ahrend, Rudiger
(2007)
Macro-economic stabilisation and structural reform: A political economy approach to emerging economies.
PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.
Abstract
The subject of this thesis is to explore the interaction between the political setting, and stabilisation and reform outcomes in emerging economies. It is motivated by the observation that during the last decades numerous governments in emerging economies have made major efforts to achieve macro-economic stability and advances in economic reforms; necessary changes in economic policy, however, frequently created strong political opposition from those particular interests that stood to lose from them, and thus often failed to be implemented. This thesis contributes to the study of the most important questions in this context, namely why and how countries slide down the path to macro-economic chaos, and under which conditions attempts to reverse the economic free-fall will be successfully pursued. Moreover, which are the reforms needed to improve the situation fundamentally, and how they can be successfully implemented given the political constraints. More specifically it studies the structural reasons leading to high inflation, and the requirements to achieve sustainable price stability. It then turns to major areas of economic reform, namely privatisation and improved governance. It studies how the political setting influences privatisation outcomes, and shows that press freedom is an important tool in fighting corruption, and thus in improving governance. It finally takes a concrete example, namely Russian regions, to study the impact of differences in the political setting and reform efforts, as well as other structural variables, on the economic outcomes.
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