Ofta efterfrågas reformer i politiken. Område si och område så anses fungera mindre bra, varför justeringar av regelverket föreslås. Men vad får politiker att föreslå och genomföra liberaliserande reformer? Det finns självfallet en rad bestämningsfaktorer  –däribland den grad av social tillit som finns i samhället. En annan faktor av betydelse – politikers högre utbildning – identifieras i den nya studien ”Empowering Knowledge: Political Leaders, Education, and Economic Liberalization”:

Our analysis establishes a robustly positive relationship between leaders’ total years of education and reforms toward economic liberalization during the leaders’ tenure. This relationship holds in democracies as well as autocracies, and in parliamentary as well as presidential systems. Further investigation on the fields of study suggests that the effect is more pronounced for economics (and business), social science, and natural science. By contrast, higher education in engineering, humanities, and the military does not produce a strong effect of inducing liberalization relative to less educated leaders.

Ytterligare en positiv externalitet av (vissa typer av) universitetsutbildning kan alltså konstateras.