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The Political Economy of Fiscal Policy: Survey

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Author Info
Marcela Eslava

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Abstract

This paper surveys the recent literature on the political economy of fiscal policy, in particular the accumulation of government debt. We examine three possible determinants of fiscal balances: opportunistic behavior by policymakers, heterogeneous fiscal preferences of either voters or politicians, and budget institutions. We focus on the contributions of the last 10 years and emphasize findings related to developing countries. We include a recent body of literature on the fiscal preferences of voters, which, interestingly, seems to suggest that voters do not favor high-spending governments. We also report some original empirical evidence. First, we test different hypotheses from the political economy literature in a simultaneous manner for a large set of both developed and developing countries. We find that less-fragmented governments and a greater ability of voters to monitor fiscal policy are related to lower deficits; the estimated effects are larger than when the two hypotheses are evaluated separately, as the existing literature does. Second, we suggest the role of the courts in the determination of fiscal policy as a promising new avenue of research, and present some suggestive novel evidence on the importance of this channel.

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Paper provided by Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department in its series RES Working Papers with number 4487.

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Date of creation: Oct 2006
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Handle: RePEc:idb:wpaper:4487

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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.:
  1. Aaron Tornell & Philip Lane, 1999. "Are Windfalls a Curse? A Non-Representative Agent Model of the Current Account and Fiscal Policy," NBER Working Papers 4839, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Von Hagen, J., 1992. "Budgeting Procedures and Fiscal Performance in the European Communities," European Economy - Economic Papers 96, Commission of the EC, Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN).
  3. Perotti, Roberto, 1996. "Fiscal Consolidation in Europe: Composition Matters," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(2), pages 105-10, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. Alesina, Alberto & Hausmann, Ricardo & Hommes, Rudolf & Stein, Ernesto, 1999. "Budget institutions and fiscal performance in Latin America," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(2), pages 253-273, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  5. Alt, James E. & Lassen, David Dreyer, 2006. "Fiscal transparency, political parties, and debt in OECD countries," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 50(6), pages 1403-1439, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. Schuknecht, Ludger, 1996. "Political Business Cycles and Fiscal Policies in Developing Countries," Kyklos, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 49(2), pages 155-70.
  7. Kenneth Rogoff & Anne Sibert, 1988. "Elections and Macroeconomic Policy Cycles," NBER Working Papers 1838, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  8. Sutter, Matthias, 2003. " The Political Economy of Fiscal Policy: An Experimental Study on the Strategic Use of Deficits," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 116(3-4), pages 313-32, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  9. Barro, Robert J, 1979. "On the Determination of the Public Debt," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 87(5), pages 940-71, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  10. Alberto Alesina & Roberto Perotti & José Tavares, 1998. "The Political Economy of Fiscal Adjustments," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 29(1998-1), pages 197-266. [Downloadable!]
  11. Brender, Adi & Drazen, Allan, 2005. "Political budget cycles in new versus established democracies," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(7), pages 1271-1295, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  12. Tabellini, Guido & Alesina, Alberto, 1990. "Voting on the Budget Deficit," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(1), pages 37-49, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  13. Francisco José Veiga & Linda Gonçalves Veiga, 2004. "Political Business Cycles at the Municipal Level," NIPE Working Papers 4/2004, NIPE - Universidade do Minho. [Downloadable!]
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  14. Kenneth Rogoff, 1990. "Equilibrium Political Budget Cycles," NBER Working Papers 2428, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  15. Nordhaus, William D, 1975. "The Political Business Cycle," Review of Economic Studies, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 42(2), pages 169-90, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  16. Per Pettersson-Lidbom, 2001. "An Empirical Investigation of the Strategic Use of Debt," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 109(3), pages 570-583, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  17. Ludger Schuknecht, 1994. "Political Business Cycles and Expenditure Policies in Developing Countries," IMF Working Papers 94/121, International Monetary Fund.
  18. 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. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  19. Crain, W. Mark & Tollison, Robert D., 1993. "Time inconsistency and fiscal policy : Empirical analysis of U.S. States, 1969-89," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 153-159, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  20. Allan Drazen & Marcela Eslava, 2005. "Electoral Manipulation via Expenditure Composition: Theory and Evidence," NBER Working Papers 11085, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  21. Velasco, Andres, 2000. "Debts and deficits with fragmented fiscal policymaking," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(1), pages 105-125, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  22. Ronald D. Kneebone & Kenneth James McKenzie, 1998. "Electoral and Partisan Cycles in Fiscal Policy: an Examination of Canadian Provinces," Working Papers 1998-06, Department of Economics, University of Calgary, revised 01 Jan 1998.
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  23. Luisa Lambertini, 2003. "Are Budget Deficits Used Strategically?," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 578, Boston College Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
  24. Gupta, Sanjeev & Clements, Benedict & Baldacci, Emanuele & Mulas-Granados, Carlos, 2005. "Fiscal policy, expenditure composition, and growth in low-income countries," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 24(3), pages 441-463, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  25. Sanjeev Gupta & Benedict Clements & Emanuele Baldacci & Carlos Mulas-Granados, 2004. "The persistence of fiscal adjustments in developing countries," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor and Francis Journals, vol. 11(4), pages 209-212, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  26. Dany Jaimovich & Ugo Panizza, 2006. "Public Debt around the World: A New Dataset of Central Government Debt," RES Working Papers 4461, Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department. [Downloadable!]
  27. Peltzman, Sam, 1992. "Voters as Fiscal Conservatives," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 107(2), pages 327-61, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  28. 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. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  29. Brender, Adi, 2003. "The effect of fiscal performance on local government election results in Israel: 1989-1998," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(9-10), pages 2187-2205, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  30. Gonzalez, Maria de los Angeles, 2002. "Do Changes in Democracy Affect the Political Budget Cycle? Evidence from Mexico," Review of Development Economics, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 6(2), pages 204-24, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  31. Dr. Peter Kenning & Hilke Plassmann, 2004. "NeuroEconomics," Experimental 0412005, EconWPA. [Downloadable!]
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Cited by:
(explanations, 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.)

  1. Chowdhury, Anis, 2008. "Growth Oriented Macroeconomic Policies for Small Islands Economies: Lessons from Singapore," Working Papers RP2008/47, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER). [Downloadable!]
  2. Asfaha, Samuel, 2007. "National Revenue Funds: Their Efficacy for Fiscal Stability and Intergenerational Equity," MPRA Paper 7656, University Library of Munich, Germany. [Downloadable!]
  3. Eduardo Lora, 2008. "El futuro de los pactos fiscales en América Latina," RES Working Papers 4614, Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department. [Downloadable!]
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