The Impact of the State on the Quality of an Economic System: A Cross-Country Analysis

Publications

6 Aug 2019

Trade & Macro

CASE Working papers

Piotr Kozarzewski

Piotr Kozarzewski
Member of the Association of Polish Economists, Member of the European Association for Comparative Economic Studies, Member of the Editorial Board of the Romanian Economic Journal.

Articles from this author:
- The evolution of Belarusian public sector: From command economy to state capitalism?
  Belarus was among the few post-communist countries to resign from comprehensive market reforms and attempt to improve the efficiency of the economy through administrative means, leaving market mechanisms only an auxiliary role. Since its inception, the ‘Belarusian economic model’ has undergone several revisions of a de-statisation and de-regulation kind, but still the Belarusian economy remains … Continued
- Change in Economic Policy Paradigm: Privatization and State Capture in Poland
  CASE prezentuje nową publikację: “Change in Economic Policy Paradigm: Privatization and State Capture in Poland”. Piotr Kozarzewski i Maciej Bałtowski analizują przyczyny i przejawy zwrotu w polskiej polityce ekonomicznej w kierunku bardziej aktywnej roli państwa, jako przykład wykorzystując politykę prywatyzacyjną. Autorzy analizują jej skutki i wskazują na wielkie i niedokończone obszary w dziedzinie transformacji struktury własnościowej, które mają niekorzystny wpływ … Continued

The paper discusses the role of the state in shaping an economic system which is, in line with the welfare economics approach, capable of performing socially important functions and achieving socially desirable results. We describe this system through a set of indexes: the IHDI, the World Happiness Index, and the Satisfaction of Life index. The characteris-tics of the state are analyzed using a set of variables which describe both the quantitative (government size, various types of governmental expenditures, and regulatory burden) and qualitative (institutional setup and property rights protection) aspects of its functioning. The study examines the “old” and “new” member states of the European Union, the post-communist countries of Eastern Europe and Asia, and the economies of Latin America. The main conclusion of the research is that the institutional quality of the state seems to be the most important for creation of a socially effective economic system, while the level of state interventionism plays, at most, a secondary and often negligible role. Geographical differentiation is also discovered, as well as the lack of a direct correlation between the characteristics of an economic system and the subjective feeling of well-being. These re-sults may corroborate the neo-institutionalist hypothesis that noneconomic factors, such as historical, institutional, cultural, and even genetic factors, may play an important role in making the economic system capable to perform its tasks; this remains an area for future research.

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The Impact of the State on the Quality of an Economic System: A Cross-Country Analysis

Piotr Kozarzewski

Articles from this author:

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