The Productivity Consequences of Political Turnover

Firm‐Level Evidence from Ukraine's Orange Revolution

Bibliographic Data

ID6232341
AuthorsJohn S Earle (0000-0001-8507-6685, George Mason University and Central European University), Scott Gehlbach (0000-0002-9689-0145, University of Wisconsin–Madison)
Year2015
Volume59
Issue3
Pages708-723
Publication date2015-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Journal of Political Science (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0092-5853 • E-ISSN: 1540-5907
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/ajps.12170
OpenAlexW2328319044
LanguageEN
Citations received23
References cited34

We examine the impact of political turnover on economic performance in a setting of largely unanticipated political change and profoundly weak institutions: the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine. Exploiting census‐type panel data on over 7,000 manufacturing enterprises, we find that the productivity of firms in the regions most supportive of Viktor Yushchenko increased by more than 15 percentage points in the three years following his election, relative to that in the most anti‐Yushchenko regions. We conclude that this effect is driven primarily by particularistic rather than general economic policies that disproportionately increased output among large enterprises, government suppliers, and private enterprises—three types of firms that had much to gain or lose from turnover at the national level. Our results demonstrate that political turnover in the context of weak institutions can have substantial distributional effects that are reflected in economic productivity

Business · Census · Context (archaeology · Economic growth · Economics · Geography · Labour economics · Panel data · Political science · Politics · Productivity · Turnover · Corruption and Economic Development · Political Conflict and Governance · Political Influence and Corporate Strategies

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