Replication data for: Room to Move: International Financial Markets and National Welfare States

A central research question in international and comparative political economy concerns the influence of international financial markets on government policy outcomes. To what extent does international capital mobility limit government policy choices? Does capital market openness render impossible the public provision of education and health care, income redistribution, and active labor market policies—all hallmarks of the contemporary welfare state? I argue that the influence of international financial markets on the governments of advanced industrial democracies is somewhat strong, but also somewhat narrow. Capital market openness allows participants in financial markets to react dramatically to changes in government policy outcomes. Market participants, however, consider only a small set of government policies when deciding how to allocate their assets. Therefore, governments face pressures to adopt market-pleasing polic ies in aggregate policy areas but retain ‘‘room to move’’ in many other policy areas. Despite financial internationalization, we will observe a significant amount of crossnational policy divergence among advanced industrial democracies. I position my analysis within current international and comparative political economy debates and develop expectations regarding the influence of financial market pressures on government policies. I then assess these expectations by employing interviews with financial market participants. I further evaluate my hypotheses using a statistical analysis of the determinants of interest rates on government bonds. I briefly discuss governments’ responses to financial market influences and conclude by offering suggestions for future research.国际与比较政治经济学领域的核心研究议题之一，聚焦国际金融市场对政府政策产出的影响。国际资本流动在多大程度上限制了政府的政策选择空间？资本市场开放是否会使得教育、医疗公共供给、收入再分配以及积极劳动力市场政策——当代福利国家的标志性特征——难以推行？本文认为，国际金融市场对发达工业民主国家政府的影响虽具备一定强度，但范围相对有限。资本市场开放使得市场参与者能够对政府政策产出的变动做出剧烈反应，但市场参与者在决定资产配置方式时，仅会考量少数几类政府政策。因此，政府虽需在整体政策领域推行契合市场偏好的政策，但仍能在诸多其他政策领域保留调整空间。即便存在金融国际化趋势，我们仍能观察到发达工业民主国家之间存在显著的跨国政策差异。本文将分析置于当前国际与比较政治经济学的学术辩论框架之中，并针对金融市场压力对政府政策的影响提出研究预期。随后，本文通过对金融市场参与者的访谈验证上述研究预期。此外，本文还通过对政府债券利率影响因素的统计分析，进一步检验本文提出的研究假说。本文最后简要探讨了政府对金融市场影响的应对策略，并为未来研究提出建议以作结。