Economic Impact of Political Cycles – The Relevance of European experinces for Romania

The research was dedicated to the analysis of the interactions between political processes and economic activities. Explicitly, the research focussed on the theoretical and empirical study concerning the economic impact of political cycles and, especially, to evaluate the relevance of European experiences for Romania. The analysis was focused to the following subjects: to overview the existent literature on the interactions between political processes and economic activities – political implications of the economic status (the so-called vote – popularity function), and economic impact of the political behaviours – the political business cycles (section 1); to analyse specific features of the vote – popularity functions and the political business cycles in the developed economies and, especially, in the European Union Countries, by over viewing relevant empirical studies (section 2); to survey the literature concerning models and empirical evidences of the interactions between political processes and economic activity for the developing countries (section 3) and for the East European Candidate Countries (section 4); to analyse the interactions between the political processes and the economic dynamics in Romania – macroeconomic signals of the political business cycles, and estimation of regional vote-popularity function (section 5); to discuss the consequences of political business cycles for the processes of transition and the European integration (section 6).