Measuring Borrowing Portfolios and Group Strength

This chapter describes how data for the statistical analysis were obtained. First, the dependent variable captures countries’ borrowing portfolios, that is, the share of loans obtained from a particular type of creditor. The main difficulty lies in obtaining reliable data on loan inflows from emerging creditors, such as China. In contrast to existing approaches focused on loan outflows from China, this book instead collects information on the loan inflows as recorded in the budgets of recipient countries. Second, the key independent variable is the type of societal coalition. The relative political strength of Labor, Industry, and Finance determines which type of coalition is present. However, their relative political influence cannot be observed directly. The chapter describes how proxies were derived by combining information about the groups’ ability to overcome collective action problems with their importance to the domestic economy.