An empirical investigaton of political economy factors behind structural reforms in OECD countries

This paper was originally prepared for the OECD Working Party No. 1 under the authority of the OECD’s Economic Policy Committee. Jens Høj and Giuseppe Nicoletti work for the OECD Economics Department as a senior economist in the Country Studies Branch and as Head of the Structural Policy Analysis Division 1, respectively. Vincenzo Galasso is an Associate Professor of Economics at Università Bocconi in Italy and Thai-Thang Dang is a private sector consultant. The authors wish to thank Jean Philippe Cotis, Jørgen Elmeskov, Michael P. Feiner, Christopher Heady, Nick Johnstone and many other colleagues in the OECD Economics Department as well as representatives from OECD member countries for useful comments on a previous version of the paper.