The last decades have been characterized by a global drive to reform finance, but the process has not been homogeneous across countries and over time. What can explain the observed differences in financial reform zeal? This paper investigates the role of government cohesiveness in explaining this heterogeneity, finding that fragmented governments breed stalemate. This phenomenon has often been assumed in the literature based on circumstantial observations, but a formal, systematic assessment was still lacking. We fill this gap by exploiting a panel dataset covering the OECD countries over 30 years and undertaking several robustness checks. Our results show that the number of parties and the presence of small, decisive coalition partners slow down financial reforms. This is consistent with theoretical models in which decision making requires cooperation among different agents with conflicting policy preferences.

中文翻译：

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分裂政府下的金融改革

过去几十年的特点是全球推动金融改革，但随着时间的推移，这一过程在不同国家和地区并不一致。什么可以解释观察到的金融改革热情的差异？本文研究了政府凝聚力在解释这种异质性方面的作用，发现分散的政府会滋生僵局。文献中经常根据环境观察假设这种现象，但仍然缺乏正式、系统的评估。我们通过利用覆盖经合组织国家 30 多年的面板数据集并进行多项稳健性检查来填补这一空白。我们的结果表明，政党的数量和小型、果断的联盟伙伴的存在减缓了金融改革。