Learning, Policy Making, and Market Reforms

Learning, Policy Making, and Market Reforms is the first study that tests the impact of policy learning on economic policy choices across time and space.

Covadonga Meseguer (Author)

9780521516969, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 30 March 2009

288 pages, 24 b/w illus. 32 tables
23.4 x 16 x 2.3 cm, 0.52 kg

'In this excellent contribution to the burgeoning literature on policy diffusion, Covadonga Meseguer demonstrates through a sophisticated theoretical analysis and rigorous empirical tests that countries learn from foreign policy success; thus, globalization brings the spread of proven solutions, not just fads and fashions.' Kurt G. Weyland, University of Texas at Austin

In the 1980s and 1990s, market reforms swept the world. It is widely believed that the reformist wave can be partly explained in terms of the lessons learned from policy failures of the past. Whereas this interpretation of events is well established, it has never been empirically proved. Learning, Policy Making, and Market Reforms is the first study that tests the impact of policy learning on economic policy choices across time and space. The study supports the popular explanation that, on average, governments around the world adopted privatization and trade liberalization, and sustained open capital accounts, as a result of learning from the experience of others.

1. The question
2. The model
3. Learning and development strategies
4. Learning and privatization
5. Learning and capital account openness
6. Learning and IMF agreements
7. Lessons about learning.

Subject Areas: Political economy [KCP], Economics [KC]