IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aejpol/v4y2012i4p1-40.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Late Budgets

Author

Listed:
  • Asger Lau Andersen
  • David Dreyer Lassen
  • Lasse Holbøll Westh Nielsen

Abstract

The budget forms the legal basis for government spending, and timely budgets, enacted before the new fiscal year, are an integral part of good governance. This paper examines the causes of late budgets using a unique dataset of budget completion dates for US state governments 1988-2007, constructed from news reports and state budget office surveys. We find 23 percent of state budgets to be late. We show that changing economic circumstances and divided government are the driving forces behind late budgets, which is consistent with a war-of-attrition bargaining model featuring budget baselines and preferences over deviations from such baselines. (JEL C78, D72, H61, H72)

Suggested Citation

  • Asger Lau Andersen & David Dreyer Lassen & Lasse Holbøll Westh Nielsen, 2012. "Late Budgets," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 4(4), pages 1-40, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aejpol:v:4:y:2012:i:4:p:1-40
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/pol.4.4.1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/pol.4.4.1
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/aej/pol/data/2010-0229_data.zip
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    • Asger L. Andersen & David Dreyer Lassen & Lasse Holbøll Westh Nielsen, 2010. "Late Budgets," EPRU Working Paper Series 2010-04, Economic Policy Research Unit (EPRU), University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rubinstein, Ariel, 1982. "Perfect Equilibrium in a Bargaining Model," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(1), pages 97-109, January.
    2. Merlo, Antonio, 1997. "Bargaining over Governments in a Stochastic Environment," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(1), pages 101-131, February.
    3. Kernell, Samuel, 1977. "Presidential Popularity and Negative Voting: An Alternative Explanation of the Midterm Congressional Decline of the President's Party," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 71(1), pages 44-66, March.
    4. Drew Fudenberg & Jean Tirole, 1991. "Game Theory," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262061414, December.
    5. Henning Bohn & Robert P. Inman, "undated". "Balanced Budget Rules and Public Deficits: Evidence from the U.S. States (Reprint 060)," Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research Working Papers 10-96, Wharton School Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research.
    6. Martin Forster & Andrew M. Jones, 2001. "The role of tobacco taxes in starting and quitting smoking: Duration analysis of British data," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 164(3), pages 517-547.
    7. Daniel Diermeier & Hulya Eraslan & Antonio Merlo, 2003. "A Structural Model of Government Formation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 71(1), pages 27-70, January.
    8. Schmidt, Peter & Witte, Ann Dryden, 1989. "Predicting criminal recidivism using 'split population' survival time models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 141-159, January.
    9. James M. Poterba & Jürgen von Hagen, 1999. "Introduction to "Fiscal Institutions and Fiscal Performance"," NBER Chapters, in: Fiscal Institutions and Fiscal Performance, pages 1-12, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Samuelson, William & Zeckhauser, Richard, 1988. "Status Quo Bias in Decision Making," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 1(1), pages 7-59, March.
    11. Hsieh, Chang-Tai, 2000. "Bargaining over reform," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 44(9), pages 1659-1676, October.
    12. Nannestad, Peter & Paldam, Martin, 1997. "The grievance asymmetry revisited: A micro study of economic voting in Denmark,1986-1992," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 81-99, February.
    13. Alt, James E. & Lowry, Robert C., 1994. "Divided Government, Fiscal Institutions, and Budget Deficits: Evidence from the States," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 88(4), pages 811-828, December.
    14. Poterba, James M. & Rueben, Kim S., 2001. "Fiscal News, State Budget Rules, and Tax-Exempt Bond Yields," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 537-562, November.
    15. Chiou, Fang-Yi & Rothenberg, Lawrence S., 2008. "Comparing Legislators and Legislatures: The Dynamics of Legislative Gridlock Reconsidered," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 16(2), pages 197-212, April.
    16. Gary A. Wagner & Erick M. Elder, 2005. "The Role of Budget Stabilization Funds in Smoothing Government Expenditures over the Business Cycle," Public Finance Review, , vol. 33(4), pages 439-465, July.
    17. Amos Tversky & Daniel Kahneman, 1991. "Loss Aversion in Riskless Choice: A Reference-Dependent Model," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(4), pages 1039-1061.
    18. Poterba, James M. & von Hagen, Jurgen (ed.), 1999. "Fiscal Institutions and Fiscal Performance," National Bureau of Economic Research Books, University of Chicago Press, edition 1, number 9780226676234, December.
    19. James M. Poterba & Jürgen von Hagen, 1999. "Fiscal Institutions and Fiscal Performance," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number pote99-1, March.
    20. Bohn, Henning & Inman, Robert P., 1996. "Balanced-budget rules and public deficits: evidence from the U.S. states," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 45(1), pages 13-76, December.
    21. Poterba, James M, 1994. "State Responses to Fiscal Crises: The Effects of Budgetary Institutions and Politics," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 102(4), pages 799-821, August.
    22. Robert C. Lowry, 2001. "A Visible Hand? Bond Markets, Political Parties, Balanced Budget Laws, and State Government Debt," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 13(1), pages 49-72, March.
    23. Martin Forster & Andrew M. Jones, "undated". "The role of tobacco taxes in starting and quitting smoking," Discussion Papers 00/51, Department of Economics, University of York.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Shoag, Daniel & Veuger, Stan, 2016. "Uncertainty and the geography of the great recession," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 84-93.
    2. Bernecker, Andreas, 2016. "Divided we reform? Evidence from US welfare policies," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 24-38.
    3. Niklas Potrafke, 2017. "Government Ideology and Economic Policy-Making in the United States," CESifo Working Paper Series 6444, CESifo.
    4. Andersen, Asger Lau & Lassen, David Dreyer & Nielsen, Lasse Holbøll Westh, 2014. "The impact of late budgets on state government borrowing costs," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 27-35.
    5. Andreas Bernecker, 2014. "Divided We Reform? Evidence from US Welfare Policies," CESifo Working Paper Series 4564, CESifo.
    6. Asger Lau Andersen & David Dreyer Lassen & Lasse Holbøll Westh Nielsen, 2010. "The Impact of Fiscal Governance on Bond Markets: Evidence from Late Budgets and State Government Borrowing Costs," EPRU Working Paper Series 2010-11, Economic Policy Research Unit (EPRU), University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mariano Tommasi & Miguel Braun, 2002. "Fiscal Rules for Subnational Governments. Some Organizing Principles and Latin American Experiences," Working Papers 44, Universidad de San Andres, Departamento de Economia, revised Mar 2002.
    2. Lars P. Feld & Alexander Kalb & Marc-Daniel Moessinger & Steffen Osterloh, 2013. "Sovereign Bond Market Reactions to Fiscal Rules and No-Bailout Clauses - The Swiss Experience," CESifo Working Paper Series 4195, CESifo.
    3. Cristina Arellano & Andrew Atkeson & Mark Wright, 2016. "External and Public Debt Crises," NBER Macroeconomics Annual, University of Chicago Press, vol. 30(1), pages 191-244.
    4. Kerstin Bernoth & Guntram B. Wolff, 2008. "Fool The Markets? Creative Accounting, Fiscal Transparency And Sovereign Risk Premia," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 55(4), pages 465-487, September.
    5. Bernd Hayo & Florian Neumeier, 2016. "The debt brake in the eyes of the German population," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 13(1), pages 139-159, January.
    6. Borge, Lars-Erik, 2005. "Strong politicians, small deficits: evidence from Norwegian local governments," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 325-344, June.
    7. Veronica Grembi & Tommaso Nannicini & Ugo Troiano, 2011. "Policy Responses to Fiscal Restraints: A Difference-in-Discontinuities Design," Working Papers 397, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    8. Heiko T. Burret & Lars P. Feld, 2014. "A Note on Budget Rules and Fiscal Federalism," ifo DICE Report, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 12(01), pages 03-11, April.
    9. C. Randall HENNING & Martin KESSLER, 2012. "Fiscal Federalism: US History for Architects of Europe’s Fiscal Union," Ekonomicheskaya Politika / Economic Policy, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, vol. 6, pages 1-31.
    10. Reza Baqir, 2002. "Districting and Government Overspending," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(6), pages 1318-1354, December.
    11. Heinemann, Friedrich & Osterloh, Steffen & Kalb, Alexander, 2014. "Sovereign risk premia: The link between fiscal rules and stability culture," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 110-127.
    12. Brändle, Thomas & Elsener, Marc, 2023. "Do fiscal rules matter? A survey on recent evidence," Working papers 2023/07, Faculty of Business and Economics - University of Basel.
    13. repec:ces:ifodic:v:12:y:2014:i:1:p:19108838 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Reuter, Wolf Heinrich, 2015. "National numerical fiscal rules: Not complied with, but still effective?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 67-81.
    15. Lars P. Feld & Alexander Kalb & Marc-Daniel Moessinger & Steffen Osterloh, 2013. "Sovereign Bond Market Reactions to Fiscal Rules and No-Bailout Clauses - The Swiss Experience," CESifo Working Paper Series 4195, CESifo Group Munich.
    16. Jens Dietrichson & Lina Ellegård, 2015. "Institutions improving fiscal performance: evidence from Swedish municipalities," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 22(5), pages 861-886, October.
    17. Asatryan, Zareh & Castellón, César & Stratmann, Thomas, 2018. "Balanced budget rules and fiscal outcomes: Evidence from historical constitutions," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 167(C), pages 105-119.
    18. Aaron Schneider, 2006. "Responding to fiscal stress: Fiscal institutions and fiscal adjustment in four Brazilian states," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(3), pages 402-425.
    19. Wagner, Gary A., 2003. "Are state budget stabilization funds only the illusion of savings?: Evidence from stationary panel data," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 43(2), pages 213-238.
    20. Timothy Besley & Anne Case, 2003. "Political Institutions and Policy Choices: Evidence from the United States," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 41(1), pages 7-73, March.
    21. Fatas, Antonio & Mihov, Ilian, 2006. "The macroeconomic effects of fiscal rules in the US states," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(1-2), pages 101-117, January.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C78 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Bargaining Theory; Matching Theory
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • H61 - Public Economics - - National Budget, Deficit, and Debt - - - Budget; Budget Systems
    • H72 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Budget and Expenditures

    Lists

    This item is featured on the following reading lists, Wikipedia, or ReplicationWiki pages:
    1. Late Budgets (American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 2012) in ReplicationWiki

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:aejpol:v:4:y:2012:i:4:p:1-40. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.