This is the Kator Daily Podcast for Wednesday, March 5th, 2008.

I'm Caleb Brown.

How compatible are sweeping free market reforms and re-election.

Johnny Monkhomer, author of the new book, The Guide to Reform,

argues that free market reforms adopted just after an election

offer the best chance for politicians to reap political benefits. We spoke prior to a Cato policy forum yesterday.

It's very difficult to argue to a politician in many cases that good policy is ultimately going to be good

politics.

Well I think that there is a high degree of pessimism surrounding the prospect for actually

doing market-oriented reforms.

We know that a number of countries have actually managed to do it

and we know that these countries have achieved

quite remarkable economic and social results.

But then we have the political pessimism, isn't it too controversial so that we will not get reelected?

That's indeed the main purpose of my book to show to politicians and their advisors that there are

strong political incentives as well to launch free market reforms

because most of the governments that have actually reformed in most of the OECD countries

have actually been re-elected almost at least once several times in some cases.

Aren't many of the benefits that would be associated with enacting free market policies

beyond the range of an election cycle for many politicians?

Well I think that when I've looked at about the dozen

OECD countries, industrialized countries that launched the most far-reaching free market reforms and had the strongest results,

...