Public Expenditure Management and Political Budget Cycles: The Case of Colima City Council 2009-2018

The political budget cycles (PBC), as an evolutionary part of the economic political cycle (EPC), demonstrate the existence of opportunistic practices of economic variables, electoral, and budgetary that the politicians in power operate in their management to continue in office. In this sense, the literature suggests a pattern of opportunistic behavior on voters’ myopia, showing that there is little retrospective memory for voters, allowing the party in power to execute public policies successfully. Thus, the objective of the research is to analyze the existence of political budgetary cycles in the management of investment spending by the City of Colima from the years 2009 to 2018. Thus, the objective of the research is to analyze the existence of political budgetary cycles in the management of investment spending by the City of Colima from the years 2009 to 2018. This was analyzed using the panel data methodology (MCO; EF; EA), to estimate the variables dependent on investment and current expenditure, a dummy variable was introduced to identify the year before the election and to be able to control the influence of the electoral period on each regression. The results show that investment spending is related to election periods, population growth, and the federal social aid budget sector. Current expenditure was only related to population growth. This allows us to explain that spending is a resource that finances public works in the states of Mexico. Thus, this research shows that public works is a public expenditure that the states of Mexico apply more in times of elections.