One strand of research argues that polarized societies find it difficult to reach political consensus on appropriate responses to crises. Another strand focuses on redistribution, asking whether income inequality stifles growth by increasing political incentives to redistribute. Which is right?

In economically volatile conditions in which it is more difficult for the public to distinguish inflation deliberately generated by government from inflation created by unanticipated economic shocks, the anti-inflationary effect of central bank independence will be unchanged but the effectiveness of exchange rate pegs will be significantly improved. Keefer and Stasavage develop and test several new hypotheses about the anti-inflationary effect of central bank independence and exchange rate pegs in the context of different institutions and different degrees of citizen information about government policies.

One strand of research argues that polarized societies find it difficult to reach political consensus on appropriate responses to crises. Another strand focuses on redistribution, asking whether income inequality stifles growth by increasing political incentives to redistribute. Which is right?Most efforts to trace the effects of income inequality on growth have focused on redistribution. However, empirical investigation has not substantiated either the positive association of income inequality with redistribution or the negative association of redistribution with economic growth.Keefer and Knack analyze the effects of inequality in the broader context of social polarization. They argue that social polarization, whether rooted in income inequality or in ethnic tension, makes large changes in current policies (including those guaranteeing the security of contract and property rights) more likely under a wide range of institutional arrangements. The resulting uncertainties in the policy and contractual environment hinder growth.They find strong empirical support for both parts of this argument.The policy implications of their argument are quite distinct from those of arguments that inequality reduces growth by increasing pressures for redistribution.If redistributive policies per se were to blame for the low growth resulting from inequality, governments that seek to mitigate income inequality must inevitably confront a tradeoff between equity and growth.If, on the other hand, the insecurity of property rights slows growth in unequal or otherwise polarized societies, governments that commit over the long run to particular redistributive policies incur less risk of slowing economic growth. Fiscal redistribution that reduces inequality may actually increase growth by reducing the risks of political uncertainty.This paper - a product of Regulation and Competition Policy, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to understand the interplay of institutions and economic development. The authors may be contacted at pkeefer@worldbank.org or sknack@worldbank.org.

"Keefer and Vlaicu demonstrate that sharply different policy choices across democracies can be explained as a consequence of differences in the ability of political competitors to make credible pre-electoral commitments to voters. Politicians can overcome their credibility deficit in two ways. First, they can build reputations. This requires that they fulfill preconditions that in practice are costly--informing voters of their promises, tracking those promises, and ensuring that voters turn out on election day. Alternatively, they can rely on intermediaries--patrons--who are already able to make credible commitments to their clients. Endogenizing credibility in this way, the authors find that targeted transfers and corruption are higher and public good provision lower than in democracies in which political competitors can make credible pre-electoral promises. They also argue that in the absence of political credibility, political reliance on patrons enhances welfare in the short run, in contrast to the traditional view that clientelism in politics is a source of significant policy distortion. However, in the long run reliance on patrons may undermine the emergence of credible political parties. The model helps to explain several puzzles. For example, public investment and corruption are higher in young democracies than old; and democratizing reforms succeeded remarkably in Victorian England, in contrast to the more difficult experiences of many democratizing countries, such as the Dominican Republic. This paper--a product of the Growth and Investment Team, Development Research Group--is part of a larger effort in the group to investigate the political economy of development"--World Bank web site.

The existing literature emphasizes and contrasts the role of political checks and balances and legal origin in determining the pace of financial sector development. This paper expands substantially on one aspect of this debate: the fact that government actions that promote financial sector development, whether prudent financial regulation or secure property and contract rights, are public goods and sensitive to political incentives to provide public goods. Tests of hypotheses emanating from this argument yield four new conclusions. First, two key determinants of those incentives-the credibility of pre-electoral political promises and citizen information about politician decisions-systematically promote financial sector development. Second, these political factors, along with political checks and balances, operate in part through their influence on the security of property rights, an argument asserted but not previously tested. Third, contrary to findings elsewhere in the literature, the political determinants of financial sector development are significant even in the presence of controls for legal origin. Finally, and again in contrast to the literature, the evidence here suggests that legal origin primarily proxies for political phenomena. Legal origin is a largely insignificant determinant of financial sector development when those phenomena are fully taken into account

Keefer reviews progress made in understanding the effects of different dimensions of governance on economic development, and the sources of quot;good governance.quot; The term governance has been used to embrace concepts that are heterogeneous both with respect to their effects on economic development and their genesis. Future progress in developing policy responses to quot;bad governancequot; will depend on separately examining these heterogeneous elements - the security of property rights, the quality of bureaucatic performance, corruption, voice, and accountability. Future progress will also depend on explicitly linking problems of governance to the overarching political environment and the incentives of governments to correct those problems.This paper - a product of Investment Climate, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to understand the impact of political institutions on development. Copies of the paper are available free from the World Bank, 1818 H Street NW, Washington, DC.

Countries vary systematically with respect to the incentives of politicians to provide broad public goods and to reduce poverty. Even in developing countries that are democracies, politicians often have incentives to divert resources to political rents and to private transfers that benefit a few citizens at the expense of many. These distortions can be traced to imperfections in political markets that are greater in some countries than in others. Keefer and Khemani review the theory and evidence on the impact of incomplete information of voters, the lack of credibility of political promises, and social polarization on political incentives. They argue that the effects of these imperfections are large but that their implications are insufficiently integrated into the design of policy reforms aimed at improving the provision of public goods and reducing poverty. This paper--a joint product of the Investment Climate and Public Services Teams, Development Research Group--was originally prepared as a background study for World Development Report 2004: Making Services Work for Poor People.

Does delegation of policymaking authority to independent agencies improve policy outcomes? This paper reports new theory and tests related to delegation of monetary policy to an independent central bank. The authors find that delegation reduces inflation only under specific institutional and political conditions.