IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/imf/imfwpa/2006-260.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Political Price Cycles in Regulated Industries: Theory and Evidence

Author

Listed:
  • Mr. Claudio A Paiva
  • Rodrigo Moita

Abstract

This paper develops a model of political regulation in which politicians set the regulated price in order to maximize electoral support by signaling to voters a pro-consumer behavior. Political incentives and welfare constraints interact in the model, yielding an equilibrium in which the real price in a regulated industry may fall in periods immediately preceding an election. The paper also provides empirical support for the theoretical model. Using quarterly data from 32 industrial and developing countries over 1978-2004, we find strong statistical and econometric evidence pointing toward the existence of electoral price cycles in gasoline markets.

Suggested Citation

  • Mr. Claudio A Paiva & Rodrigo Moita, 2006. "Political Price Cycles in Regulated Industries: Theory and Evidence," IMF Working Papers 2006/260, International Monetary Fund.
    • Handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2006/260
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=20049
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hibbs, Douglas A., 1977. "Political Parties and Macroeconomic Policy," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 71(4), pages 1467-1487, December.
    2. George J. Stigler, 1971. "The Theory of Economic Regulation," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 2(1), pages 3-21, Spring.
    3. Spiller, Pablo T, 1990. "Politicians, Interest Groups, and Regulators: A Multiple-Principals Agency Theory of Regulation, or "Let Them Be Bribed."," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 33(1), pages 65-101, April.
    4. Rogoff, Kenneth, 1990. "Equilibrium Political Budget Cycles," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(1), pages 21-36, March.
    5. Paiva, Claudio A. C., 1996. "Electoral price cycles in regulated industries," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 24(10), pages 1673-1680, October.
    6. Alberto Alesina, 1987. "Macroeconomic Policy in a Two-Party System as a Repeated Game," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 102(3), pages 651-678.
    7. William D. Nordhaus, 1975. "The Political Business Cycle," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 42(2), pages 169-190.
    8. Gary S. Becker, 1983. "A Theory of Competition Among Pressure Groups for Political Influence," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 98(3), pages 371-400.
    9. Jean-Jacques Laffont & Jean Tirole, 1993. "A Theory of Incentives in Procurement and Regulation," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262121743, April.
    10. Michael Spence, 1973. "Job Market Signaling," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 87(3), pages 355-374.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Rodrigo M. S. Moita & Claudio Paiva, 2013. "Political Price Cycles in Regulated Industries: Theory and Evidence," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 5(1), pages 94-121, February.
    2. Englmaier, Florian & Roider, Andreas & Stowasser, Till & Hinreiner, Lisa, 2017. "Power Politics: Electoral Cycles in German Electricity Prices," VfS Annual Conference 2017 (Vienna): Alternative Structures for Money and Banking 168267, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    3. Heyes, Anthony & Kapur, Sandeep, 2011. "Regulatory attitudes and environmental innovation in a model combining internal and external R&D," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 61(3), pages 327-340, May.

    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. Rodrigo M. S. Moita & Claudio Paiva, 2013. "Political Price Cycles in Regulated Industries: Theory and Evidence," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 5(1), pages 94-121, February.
    2. Eric Dubois, 2016. "Political Business Cycles 40 Years after Nordhaus," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) hal-01291401, HAL.
    3. Eric Dubois, 2016. "Political business cycles 40 years after Nordhaus," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 166(1), pages 235-259, January.
    4. Eric Dubois, 2016. "Political Business Cycles 40 Years after Nordhaus," Post-Print hal-01291401, HAL.
    5. Josef Brechler & Adam Geršl, 2014. "Political legislation cycle in the Czech Republic," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 25(2), pages 137-153, June.
    6. Vítor Castro & Rodrigo Martins, 2015. "Budget, expenditures composition and political manipulation: Evidence from Portugal," NIPE Working Papers 4/2015, NIPE - Universidade do Minho.
    7. Juan Carlos Berganza, 1998. "Relationships Between Politicians and Voters Through Elections: A Review Essay," Working Papers wp1998_9809, CEMFI.
    8. 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.
    9. Yogesh Uppal, 2011. "Does legislative turnover adversely affect state expenditure policy? Evidence from Indian state elections," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 147(1), pages 189-207, April.
    10. Kouvavas, Omiros, 2013. "Political Budget Cycles Revisited, the Case for Social Capital," MPRA Paper 57504, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 15 Sep 2013.
    11. Klein, Michael W, 1996. "Timing Is All: Elections and the Duration of United States Business Cycles," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 28(1), pages 84-101, February.
    12. Efthyvoulou, Georgios, 2011. "Political cycles under external economic constraints: Evidence from Cyprus," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 63(6), pages 638-662.
    13. Helene Ehrhart, 2013. "Elections and the structure of taxation in developing countries," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 156(1), pages 195-211, July.
    14. Troeger, Vera & Schneider, Christina J., 2012. "Strategic Budgeteering and Debt Allocation," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 85, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    15. V�tor Castro & Rodrigo Martins, 2016. "Are there political cycles hidden inside government expenditures?," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(1), pages 34-37, January.
    16. Toke S. Aidt & Francisco José Veiga & Linda Gonçalves Veiga, 2007. "Election Results and Opportunistic Policies: An Integrated Approach," NIPE Working Papers 24/2007, NIPE - Universidade do Minho.
    17. Sapir, Andre & Sekkat, Khalid, 1999. "Optimum electoral areas: Should Europe adopt a single election day?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 43(8), pages 1595-1619, August.
    18. Ali Alichi, 2008. "A Model of Sovereign Debt in Democracies," IMF Working Papers 2008/152, International Monetary Fund.
    19. Cleomar Gomes da silva & Flavio V. Vieira, 2016. "Monetary policy decision making: the role of ideology, institutions and central bank independence," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 36(4), pages 2051-2062.
    20. 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.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    WP;

    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:imf:imfwpa:2006/260. 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: Akshay Modi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/imfffus.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.