The impact of political leaders' profession and education on reforms

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may AbstractThis paper analyzes whether the educational and professional background of a head of government matters for the implementation of market-liberalizing reforms. Employing panel data over the period 1970-2002, we present empirical evidence based on a novel data set covering profession and education of more than 500 political leaders from 73 countries. Our results show that entrepreneurs, professional scientists, and trained economists are significantly more reform oriented. Contrary, union executives tend to impede reforms. We also highlight interactions between profession and education with time in office and the political leaning of the ruling party.

Voters prefer more qualified mayors, but does it matter for public finances? Evidence for Germany

“…Besley, Montalvo, and Reynal-Querol (2011) as well as Congleton and Zhang (2009) show that more educated political leaders can stimulate economic growth. Dreher, Lamla, Lein, and Somogyi (2009) provide evidence that the professional background of the head of government matters for the implementation of market-liberalizing reforms. Similarly, Göhlmann and Vaubel (2007) as well as Farvaque, Hammadou, andStanek (2009, 2011) demonstrate that the educational and professional background as well as the gender of decision makers in monetary policy councils is relevant for inflation.…”

Political leaders' socioeconomic background and fiscal performance in Germany

“…However, among the occupation dummies, there are three additional effects (for scientists other than economists, military personnel, and life-long politicians) that have a positive sign, but the authors conduct no further tests to compare these groups. Moreover, Dreher et al's (2009) findings are not robust to varying specifications, especially to the inclusion of a lagged dependent variable and additional controls. Mikosch (2009) employs the same dataset in an attempt to explain differences in public deficits.…”

“…More precisely, they find that the more educated the leader (differentiating between non-graduate education, graduate education, and college education) and the longer the stay in office, the higher the country's economic growth. Dreher et al (2009) focus on the effect of different fields of education and occupation on economic reforms, measured as changes in the Economic Freedom Index. They are primarily interested in the effect of leaders' economic and entrepreneurial backgrounds and expect that economists, as well as entrepreneurs, should be more likely to liberalise the economy.…”

The return of the prodigy son: Do return migrants make better leaders?

“…Taken together, these two papers suggest that, on the one hand, democracies select leaders differently regarding their educational background, and on the other hand, the educational background of the leaders affects their influence on growth. Education of the leaders is also put under study, together with professional background, by Dreher et al (2009). This paper employs a panel data set over the 1970-2002 period, which gathers information on more than 500 political leaders from 73 countries, to investigate the impact of leaders' education and occupation on the implementation of market-liberalizing reforms.…”

“…This could in particular be the case of leaders' professions, which have been shown by Dreher et al (2009) to have an impact on leaders' propensity to implement market-liberalizing reforms, and which are indeed correlated with migration experiences as shown in Annex C. In Column 4…”