IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/qut/auncer/2012_2.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Expert Politicians, Electoral Control, and Fiscal Restraints

Author

Listed:
  • Uwe Dulleck

    (QUT)

  • Berthold U Wigger

    (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology)

Abstract

Fiscal restraints have been argued to force today's governments to internalize the externalities that result from extensive borrowing on future electorates and governments as well as on other countries by causing fiscal instability. In this article we provide an alternative argument for fiscal restraints which is based on an agency perspective on government. A budget maximizing politician is better informed than the electorate about the necessary spending to ensure the states ability to provide services for the economy. In this respect, the politician is an expert in the meaning of the credence good literature. The electorate, being able to observe the budget but not the necessary level of spending, will reelect a government if its budget does not exceed a critical level. A fiscal restraint limits the maximum spending a government will choose if the reelection level is not sufficient to ensure the state's ability to provide services to the economy. We determine when such a fiscal restraint improves voter welfare and discuss the role of the opposition in situations where very high levels of spending are required.

Suggested Citation

  • Uwe Dulleck & Berthold U Wigger, 2012. "Expert Politicians, Electoral Control, and Fiscal Restraints," NCER Working Paper Series 79, National Centre for Econometric Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:qut:auncer:2012_2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.ncer.edu.au/papers/documents/WP79a.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Besley, Timothy & Smart, Michael, 2007. "Fiscal restraints and voter welfare," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(3-4), pages 755-773, April.
    2. Torsten Persson & Gérard Roland & Guido Tabellini, 1997. "Separation of Powers and Political Accountability," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(4), pages 1163-1202.
    3. Torsten Persson & Lars E. O. Svensson, 1989. "Why a Stubborn Conservative would Run a Deficit: Policy with Time-Inconsistent Preferences," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 104(2), pages 325-345.
    4. Uwe Dulleck & Rudolf Kerschbamer & Matthias Sutter, 2009. "The Economics of Credence Goods: On the Role of Liability, Verifiability, Reputation and Competition," Working Papers 2009-03, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck.
    5. Brennan,Geoffrey & Buchanan,James M., 2006. "The Power to Tax," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521027922.
    6. von Hagen, Jurgen & Eichengreen, Barry, 1996. "Federalism, Fiscal Restraints, and European Monetary Union," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(2), pages 134-138, May.
    7. Toke Aidt & Francisco Veiga & Linda Veiga, 2011. "Election results and opportunistic policies: A new test of the rational political business cycle model," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 148(1), pages 21-44, July.
    8. John Ferejohn, 1986. "Incumbent performance and electoral control," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 50(1), pages 5-25, January.
    9. Rogoff, Kenneth, 1990. "Equilibrium Political Budget Cycles," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(1), pages 21-36, March.
    10. Robert Barro, 1973. "The control of politicians: An economic model," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 14(1), pages 19-42, March.
    11. Pierre Yared, 2010. "Politicians, Taxes and Debt," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 77(2), pages 806-840.
    12. Darby, Michael R & Karni, Edi, 1973. "Free Competition and the Optimal Amount of Fraud," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 16(1), pages 67-88, April.
    13. William D. Nordhaus, 1975. "The Political Business Cycle," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 42(2), pages 169-190.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Dulleck, Uwe & Wigger, Berthold U., 2015. "Politicians as experts, electoral control, and fiscal restraints," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 106-116.
    2. César Martinelli & John Duggan, 2014. "The Political Economy of Dynamic Elections: A Survey and Some New Results," Working Papers 1403, Centro de Investigacion Economica, ITAM.
    3. Alesina, A. & Passalacqua, A., 2016. "The Political Economy of Government Debt," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 2599-2651, Elsevier.
    4. Ujhelyi, Gergely, 2014. "Civil service reform," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 15-25.
    5. Jennings, Colin, 2011. "The good, the bad and the populist: A model of political agency with emotional voters," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 27(4), pages 611-624.
    6. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 1999. "Political economics and macroeconomic policy," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 22, pages 1397-1482, Elsevier.
    7. Jan Kluge & Gunther Markwardt & Christian Thater, 2015. "Self-preserving Leviathans - Evidence from Regional-level Data," CESifo Working Paper Series 5177, CESifo.
    8. Bernardo P. Schettini & Rafael Terra, 2020. "Electoral incentives and Public Employees’ Retirement Systems in Brazilian municipalities," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 184(1), pages 79-103, July.
    9. Hans Gersbach, 2004. "Competition of Politicians for Incentive Contracts and Elections," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 121(1), pages 157-177, October.
    10. Acemoglu, Daron & Golosov, Mikhail & Tsyvinski, Aleh, 2011. "Political economy of Ramsey taxation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(7-8), pages 467-475, August.
    11. Timothy Besley, 2004. "Joseph Schumpeter Lecture: Paying Politicians: Theory and Evidence," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 2(2-3), pages 193-215, 04/05.
    12. Aidt, Toke S. & Dutta, Jayasri, 2007. "Policy myopia and economic growth," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 23(3), pages 734-753, September.
    13. Raveh, Ohad & Tsur, Yacov, 2020. "Reelection, growth and public debt," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    14. Dalle Nogare, Chiara & Kauder, Björn, 2017. "Term limits for mayors and intergovernmental grants: Evidence from Italian cities," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 1-11.
    15. Lagunoff, Roger, 2006. "Credible communication in dynastic government," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(1-2), pages 59-86, January.
    16. Gilles Saint‐Paul & Davide Ticchi & Andrea Vindigni, 2016. "A Theory of Political Entrenchment," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 126(593), pages 1238-1263, June.
    17. Umeno, Luis Gustavo & Bugarin, Maurício Soares, 2008. "Electoral Control in the Presence of Moral Hazard and Adverse Selection," Brazilian Review of Econometrics, Sociedade Brasileira de Econometria - SBE, vol. 28(1), May.
    18. Vergne, Clémence, 2009. "Democracy, elections and allocation of public expenditures in developing countries," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 63-77, March.
    19. Gupta, Sanjeev & Liu, Estelle X. & Mulas-Granados, Carlos, 2016. "Now or later? The political economy of public investment in democracies," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 101-114.
    20. Acemoglu, Daron & Golosov, Mikhail & Tsyvinski, Aleh, 2011. "Power fluctuations and political economy," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 146(3), pages 1009-1041, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Electoral control; Fiscal restraints; Credence goods;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • H50 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - General
    • H61 - Public Economics - - National Budget, Deficit, and Debt - - - Budget; Budget Systems

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:qut:auncer:2012_2. 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: School of Economics and Finance (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ncerrau.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.