Challenges in estimating the effects of constitutional design on public policy

Abstract

Empirical constitutional economics has made great progress since the beginning of the millennium. Numerous important insights into the effects of constitutions have been uncovered. Rather than just summarizing the state of the art, this chapter identifies some of the most important challenges and pressing questions to be addressed by constitutional economics scholars. It further discusses the possible role of different empirical methods in this field of research. In spite of the progress that has been achieved, much work is left to be done and some of the early empirical findings might easily be overturned based on new and more reliable empirical evidence.