Is there an election cycle in public employment? Separating time effects from election year effects
Abstract
Do governments increase public employment in election years? This paper investigates this question by using data from Sweden and Finland, two countries that are similar in many respects but in which local elections are held at different points in time. We can thereby separate an election effect from other time effects. Our results indicate that there is a statistically significant election year effect in local public employment, a production factor that is highly visible in the welfare services provided by the local governments in the Scandinavian countries. The effect also seems to be economically significant; the municipalities employ 0.6 more full-time employees per 1,000 capita in election years than in other years (which correspond to an increase by approximately 1 percent).Download Info
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Paper provided by IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy in its series Working Paper Series with number 2008:3.Length: 25 pages
Date of creation: 10 Mar 2008
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:hhs:ifauwp:2008_003
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Keywords: Election cycle; public employment; exogenous elections;Other versions of this item:
- Matz Dahlberg & Eva Mörk, 2011. "Is There an Election Cycle in Public Employment? Separating Time Effects from Election Year Effects," CESifo Economic Studies, CESifo, vol. 57(3), pages 480-498, September.
- Dahlberg, Matz & Mörk, Eva, 2008. "Is there an election cycle in public employment? Separating time effects from election year effects," Working Paper Series 2008:4, Uppsala University, Department of Economics.
- Matz Dahlberg & Eva Mörk, 2011. "Is there an election cycle in public employment? Separating time effects from election year effects," Working Papers 2011/8, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
- D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
- H72 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Budget and Expenditures
- P16 - Economic Systems - - Capitalist Systems - - - Political Economy of Capitalism
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
- NEP-ALL-2008-03-15 (All new papers)
- NEP-CDM-2008-03-15 (Collective Decision-Making)
- NEP-POL-2008-03-15 (Positive Political Economics)
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Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Jon H. Fiva & Gisle James Natvik, 2009.
"Do re-election probabilities influence public investment?,"
Working Papers
2009/36, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
- Jon Fiva & Gisle James Natvik, 2010. "Do re-election probabilities influence public investment?," 2010 Meeting Papers 334, Society for Economic Dynamics.
- Fiva, Jon H. & Natvik, Gisle James, 2009. "Do Re-election Probabilities Influence Public Investment?," Memorandum 16/2009, Oslo University, Department of Economics.
- Jon H. Fiva & Gisle James Natvik, 2009. "Do Re-election Probabilities Influence Public Investment?," CESifo Working Paper Series 2709, CESifo Group Munich.
- Jon H. Fiva & Gisle James Natvik, 2009. "Do re-election probabilities influence public investment?," Working Paper 2009/13, Norges Bank.
- Dirk Foremny & Nadine Riedel, 2012.
"Business Taxes and the Electoral Cycle,"
CESifo Working Paper Series
3729, CESifo Group Munich.
- Foremny, Dirk & Riedel, Nadine, 2012. "Business taxes and the electoral cycle," FZID Discussion Papers 43-2012, University of Hohenheim, Center for Research on Innovation and Services (FZID).
- Dirk Foremny & Nadine Riedel, 2012. "Business taxes and the electoral cycle," Working Papers 2012/3, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
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