Trade openness and public expenditure. The Spanish case, 1960–2000

Sáenz, Estela; Sabaté, Marcela; Gadea, Marı́a Dolores

doi:10.1007/s11127-011-9841-8

“…The degree of trade openness, for its part, shows a positive sign. Apparently, the demand effect proposed by Rodrik (1997) predominated over the race to the bottom effect, confirming the results by Sáenz et al (2013) also for Spain in the period 1960-2000.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 79%

Political Regime and Social Spending in Spain: A Time Series Analysis (1850-2000)

Espuelas

¹

2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Over the past century and a half, Spain has had a tumultuous political history. What impact has this had on social policy? Democracy has had a positive effect on both the levels of social spending and its long-term growth trend. With the arrival of democracy in 1931, the transition began from a traditional regime (with low levels of social spending) to a modern regime (with high levels of social spending). Franco's dictatorship, however, reversed this change in direction, retarding the positive growth in social spending. At the same time, the effect of left-wing parties was statistically significant only in the nineteen-thirties (prior to the Keynesian consensus) and in the period of the Bourbon Restoration (when the preferences of low-income groups were systematically ignored).JEL Codes: I30, H53, N30.Keywords: Welfare State, Dictatorship, Democracy, Redistribution, Spain, History of social policy. Sergio Espuelas Universitat de BarcelonaAcknowledgements: I thank Marc Badia, Yolanda Blasco, Anna Carreras, Francisco Comín, Alfonso Herranz, Peter H. Lindert, Chris Minns, Jerònia Pons, Javier San Julián, Margarita Vilar, and the participants in the first CIBERELAH, the economic history seminar at the University of Zaragoza, and in the fourth meeting of the AEHE for their helpful comments. Leandro Prados de la Escosura kindly shared with me his Gini data on Spain. As always, any errors are the sole responsibility of the author. Funding from the projects ECO2015-65049-C2-2-P (MINECO, FEDER, EU) and HAR2013-41121-P (MINECO) and the Ramón Areces Foundation is acknowledged.

show abstract

“…Results do not hold in every subsample. For example, Adams and Sakyi () find confirmatory evidence for sub‐Saharan Africa, Dahmardeh and Ahmadi () find confirmatory evidence for 12 Middle‐East countries, Hennessey () finds confirmatory evidence for Latin America, Zakaria and Shakoor () find confirmatory evidence for Pakistan, and Sáenz, Sabaté, and Gadea () find confirmatory evidence for Spain. On the other hand, Molana, Montagna, and Violato () do not find overwhelming support in a sample of 23 OECD countries, and Liberati () finds that the results are highly sample contingent.…”

Section: More Open Economies and Bigger Governmentsmentioning

confidence: 98%

State capacity and the quality of policies. Revisiting the relationship between openness and government size

Chuaire

¹

,

Scartascini

²

,

Tommasi

³

2017

Economics & Politics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Countries with different levels of state capacity have access to different sets of policies. In particular, countries with strong state capabilities are able to draw from a broader menu of policies, and pick and successfully implement those policies that best suit the nature of their challenges. In the case of exposure to trade related risk, the literature has usually considered that only one type of policies -those increasing government size-can help to overcome the challenge. However, there are a number of policies that can mitigate trade-induced risks, many of which do not have the necessary implication of increasing public spending. Yet, many such policies require governmental capabilities not available to any country. For that reason, the relationship between openness and the size of government might be mediated by the capabilities of states. The empirical analysis in this paper shows exactly that.

show abstract

“…Apparently, the demand effect proposed by Rodrik (1997) predominated over the race to the bottom effect, confirming the results by Sáenz et al . (2013) for Spain in 1960-2000. Finally, fiscal capacity appears statistically non-significant.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Political Regime and Public Social Spending in Spain: A Time Series Analysis (1850-2000)

Espuelas

¹

2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Over the past century and a half, Spain has had a tumultuous political history. What impact has this had on social policy? Democracy has had a positive effect on both the levels of social spending and its long-term growth trend. With the arrival of democracy in 1931, the transition began from a traditional regime (with low levels of social spending) to a modern regime (with high levels of social spending). Franco's dictatorship, however, reversed this change in direction, retarding the positive growth in social spending. At the same time, the effect of left-wing parties was statistically significant only in the nineteen-thirties (prior to the Keynesian consensus) and in the period of the Bourbon Restoration (when the preferences of low-income groups were systematically ignored). JEL Codes: I30, H53, N30.Keywords: Welfare State, Dictatorship, Democracy, Redistribution, Spain, History of social policy ResumenEn el último siglo y medio, España ha tenido una convulsa historia política. ¿Cuál ha sido el impacto sobre la política social? La democracia tuvo un efecto positivo tanto sobre los niveles como sobre la tendencia a largo plazo del gasto social. Con la llegada de la democracia en 1931 se inició, de hecho, la transición de un régimen tradicional (con bajos niveles de gasto social) a un régimen moderno (con altos niveles de gasto social). La dictadura franquista, sin embargo, revirtió este cambio de tendencia, retrasando el crecimiento definitivo del gasto social en España. Al mismo tiempo, el efecto de los partidos de izquierdas solo fue estadísticamente significativo en los años 30 (antes del consenso keynesiano) y en el periodo de la Restauración (cuando las preferencias de los grupos de renta baja eran ignoradas sistemáticamente). Códigos JEL: I30, H53, N30Palabras clave: Estado del Bienestar, Dictadura, Democracia, Redistribución, España, Historia de la política social Polanyi (2001[1944]) described the social history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as the result of a double movement: an unprecedented growth of market mechanisms, in parallel to the development of "a network of measures and policies (…) designed to check the action of the market relative to labour, land, and money" (p. 79). This process, he added, "may happen in a great variety of ways, democratic and aristocratic, constitutionalist and authoritarian" (p. 259). Even today, however, there is no consensus on the impact of the political regime on the development of social policy. Initially, one would expect the expansion of suffrage and the advancement of democracy to have a positive effect (Lindert 2004, Haggard andKaufman 2008). However, there are also examples of social policy being developed under nondemocratic governments, such as that of Bismarck's Germany. Indeed, Mulligan et al. (2010) and Cutler and Johnson (2004) take the view that dictatorships also have incentives to increase social spending, whether for reasons of economic efficiency or to achieve political legitimacy. In Spain, the development of social policy t...

show abstract

Trade openness and public expenditure. The Spanish case, 1960–2000

Cited by 16 publications

References 40 publications

Political Regime and Social Spending in Spain: A Time Series Analysis (1850-2000)

Political Regime and Social Spending in Spain: A Time Series Analysis (1850-2000)

State capacity and the quality of policies. Revisiting the relationship between openness and government size

Political Regime and Public Social Spending in Spain: A Time Series Analysis (1850-2000)

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About