Pfadabhängigkeit, Konvergenz oder Regulativer Wettbewerb: Determinanten der Außenwirtschaftsliberalisierung, 1978-2002

Abstract

In this article, we evaluate three different explanations for the international determinants of foreign economic liberalization and thus a main facet of globalization. Our theoretical model and a numerical simulation demonstrate that the popular thesis that regulatory competition has driven this process is only valid under very restrictive assumptions. It may rather hold for capital account openness than trade policy making. The empirical tests refer to a new data set that measures foreign economic policies along these two dimensions. We show with the help of a panel regression and tools borrowed from spatial econometrics that the process of foreign economic liberalization has been rather uneven. Path dependency rather than convergence or regulatory competition is accordingly the dominant feature. Although states that have been highly autarkic in the 1970s or 1980s have substantially liberalized themselves, we consequently observe an increasing variation in the policy profiles.