The present fiscal difficulties of many countries amplify the call for structural reforms. To provide stylized facts on how such reforms have worked in the past, we quantitatively review 46 studies estimating the relation between reforms and growth. These studies examined structural reforms carried out in different transition countries around the world. Our results suggest that an average reform was costly in the short run, but had strong positive effects on the long-run growth. The findings hold even after correction for publication bias and misspecifications in some primary studies.

Reference: Babecky Jan & Tomas Havranek (2014), "Structural Reforms and Growth in Transition: A Meta-Analysis." Economics of Transition 22(1), pp. 13-42.