Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Do Elections Affect the Composition of Fiscal Policy?

Contents:

Author Info

  • Margarita Katsimi
  • Vassilis Sarantides

Abstract

This paper investigates the impact of elections on the level and composition of fiscal instruments using a sample of 19 high-income OECD countries that can be characterized as developed, established democracies during the period 1972-1999. We find that elections shift public spending towards current and away from capital expenditures. Moreover, although we find no evidence for an electoral cycle for government deficit and expenditures, we do find a negative effect of elections on revenue. Our results indicate that the fall in revenue in election periods is attributed to a fall in direct taxation. The decomposition of our electoral dummy suggests that fiscal manipulation seems to be concentrated shortly before the elections. Finally, when we distinguish among predetermined and endogenous elections we find that the above results apply only for the predetermined electoral periods while endogenous elections seem to increase the budget deficit and to leave the composition of fiscal policy unaffected.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://www.cesifo-group.de/portal/page/portal/DocBase_Content/WP/WP-CESifo_Working_Papers/wp-cesifo-2010/wp-cesifo-2010-01/cesifo1_wp2908.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by CESifo Group Munich in its series CESifo Working Paper Series with number 2908.

as in new window
Length:
Date of creation: 2010
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_2908

Contact details of provider:
Postal: Poschingerstrasse 5, 81679 Munich
Phone: +49 (89) 9224-0
Fax: +49 (89) 985369
Email:
Web page: http://www.cesifo.de
More information through EDIRC

Related research

Keywords: political budget cycles; elections; composition of fiscal policy; quality of public expenditure;

Find related papers by JEL classification:

References

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
as in new window
  1. Konstantinos Angelopoulos & George Economides, 2008. "Fiscal policy, rent seeking, and growth under electoral uncertainty: theory and evidence from the OECD," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 41(4), pages 1375-1405, November.
  2. Levitt, Steven D, 1997. "Using Electoral Cycles in Police Hiring to Estimate the Effect of Police on Crime," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(3), pages 270-90, June.
  3. Alejandro Saporiti & Jorge Streb, 2008. "Separation of powers and political budget cycles," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 137(1), pages 329-345, October.
  4. Clémence Vergne, 2011. "Democracy, Elections and Allocation of Public Expenditure in Developing Countries," Working Papers halshs-00564572, HAL.
  5. Nordhaus, William D, 1975. "The Political Business Cycle," Review of Economic Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(2), pages 169-90, April.
  6. Mark Mink & Jakob de Haan, 2005. "Has the Stability and Growth Pact Impeded Political Budget Cycles in the European Union?," CESifo Working Paper Series 1532, CESifo Group Munich.
  7. Adi Brender & Allan Drazen, 2008. "How Do Budget Deficits and Economic Growth Affect Reelection Prospects? Evidence from a Large Panel of Countries," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(5), pages 2203-20, December.
  8. Jim Malley & Apostolis Philippopoulos & Ulrich Woitek, 2005. "Electoral Uncertainty, Fiscal Policy and Macroeconomic Fluctuations," CESifo Working Paper Series 1593, CESifo Group Munich.
  9. Schuknecht, Ludger, 2000. " Fiscal Policy Cycles and Public Expenditure in Developing Countries," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 102(1-2), pages 115-30, January.
  10. Kneller, Richard & Bleaney, Michael F. & Gemmell, Norman, 1999. "Fiscal policy and growth: evidence from OECD countries," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(2), pages 171-190, November.
  11. Cukierman, Alex & Meltzer, Allan H, 1986. "A Positive Theory of Discretionary Policy, the Cost of Democratic Government and the Benefits of a Constitution," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 24(3), pages 367-88, July.
  12. Shi, Min & Svensson, Jakob, 2006. "Political budget cycles: Do they differ across countries and why?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(8-9), pages 1367-1389, September.
  13. Nickell, Stephen J, 1981. "Biases in Dynamic Models with Fixed Effects," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 49(6), pages 1417-26, November.
  14. Kiviet, Jan F., 1995. "On bias, inconsistency, and efficiency of various estimators in dynamic panel data models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 53-78, July.
  15. Maddala, G S & Wu, Shaowen, 1999. " A Comparative Study of Unit Root Tests with Panel Data and a New Simple Test," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 61(0), pages 631-52, Special I.
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 in new window

Cited by:
  1. Niklas Potrafke, 2010. "Does government ideology influence budget composition? Empirical evidence from OECD countries," Working Paper Series of the Department of Economics, University of Konstanz 2010-16, Department of Economics, University of Konstanz.
  2. Margarita Katsimi & Vassilis Sarantides, 2011. "Public Investment and Re-election Prospects in Developed Countries," CESifo Working Paper Series 3570, CESifo Group Munich.
  3. Niklas Potrafke, 2010. "Ideology and cultural policy," TWI Research Paper Series 49, Thurgauer Wirtschaftsinstitut, Universität Konstanz.
  4. Niklas Potrafke, 2012. "Political cycles and economic performance in OECD countries: empirical evidence from 1951–2006," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 150(1), pages 155-179, January.
  5. Christian Bj�rnskov & Niklas Potrafke, 2012. "Political Ideology and Economic Freedom Across Canadian Provinces," Eastern Economic Journal, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 38(2), pages 143-166.
  6. Potrafke, Niklas, 2010. "The growth of public health expenditures in OECD countries: Do government ideology and electoral motives matter?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(6), pages 797-810, December.
  7. Mechtel, Mario & Potrafke, Niklas, 2011. "Electoral Cycles in Active Labor Market Policies," University of Tuebingen Working Papers in Economics and Finance 2, University of Tuebingen, Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences.
  8. Santolini, Raffaella, 2011. "Do electoral rules and elections matter in expenditure fragmentation? Empirical evidence from Italian regions," MPRA Paper 29724, University Library of Munich, Germany.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_2908

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Julio Saavedra).

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 references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link 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 profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

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