PK Doesn’t Buy Bartels ; Further Reading
Well, I thought that since PK said he doesn’t buy the Bartels graphs because he doesn’t have a sound reason to believe they are true I would mention that. I am posting though, because people are looking very confused at them (comments and trackbacks). I cannot speak to Bartels’ book, but there is already a significant literature on political business cycles and some of them foresee behavior very much what Bartels shows. Indeed, such movement does not seem to be limited to the United States, from what I recall. I am by no means up on this literature, but I do remember there being a lit review of it in my freshman (ok, I was probably the only freshmen in the course) political economy course with the excellent Carles Boix. If you are interested in further reading on the subject of growth, inequality, and partisanship of government check out the following (pulled from the syllabus of said course):
- Keech, William. 1995. Economic Politics: The Costs of Democracy. (New York: Cambridge University Press), Chapter 2, p 22-44.
- Paldam, Martin. 1997. “Political Business Cycles,” in Dennis C. Mueller, ed. Perspectives on Public Choice: A Handbook (New York: Cambridge University Press), p 342-370.
- R.M. Alvarez, G. Garrett, and P. Lange. 1991. “Government Partisanship, Labor Organization, and Macroeconomic Performance, 1967-1984″, American Political Science Review, 85, p 539-556.
- Boix, Carles. 1998. Political Parties, Growth, and Inequality. New York: Cambridge University Press. Chapter 2.
Unfortunately, I do not remember much discussion of this topic nor do I see anything in the index in Boix’s insanely interesting book Democracy and Redistribution, but I’ll plug it anyway.
