IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pre/wpaper/201113.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Young Democracies and Government Size: Evidence from Latin America

Author

Listed:
  • Manoel Bittencourt

    (Department of Economics, University of Pretoria)

Abstract

We empirically investigate the hypothesis that when democracies are young, or still fragile and unconsolidated, the size of government (in terms of consumption, debt and share to GDP) tends to increase in an attempt to buy out the electorate, so that democracy becomes acceptable and ?the only game in town?. Our sample includes nine Latin American countries between 1970 and 2007 and the results, based on principal component and panel data analyses (POLS, Fixed E¤ects and SYS-GMM estimators), suggest that the young democracies of Latin America have been indeed associated with bigger governments. Furthermore, we test for the hypothesis that the old dictatorships also engaged in activities which would leave the young democracies with bigger de?cits to be repaid, therefore with bigger governments in their initial stages. This hypothesis is not con?rmed by the analysis conducted here. Finally, there is some evidence that as democracies, and also the electorate, mature over time, the size of government shows signs of reduction.

Suggested Citation

  • Manoel Bittencourt, 2011. "Young Democracies and Government Size: Evidence from Latin America," Working Papers 201113, University of Pretoria, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:pre:wpaper:201113
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.up.ac.za/media/shared/61/WP/wp_2011_13.zp39554.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Akhmed Akhmedov & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, 2004. "Opportunistic Political Cycles: Test in a Young Democracy Setting," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(4), pages 1301-1338.
    2. Alberto Alesina & Filipe R. Campante & Guido Tabellini, 2008. "Why is Fiscal Policy Often Procyclical?," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 6(5), pages 1006-1036, September.
    3. Kenneth Rogoff & Anne Sibert, 1988. "Elections and Macroeconomic Policy Cycles," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 55(1), pages 1-16.
    4. Gonzalez, Maria de los Angeles, 2002. "Do Changes in Democracy Affect the Political Budget Cycle? Evidence from Mexico," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 6(2), pages 204-224, June.
    5. Stephen Bond, 2002. "Dynamic panel data models: a guide to microdata methods and practice," CeMMAP working papers CWP09/02, Centre for Microdata Methods and Practice, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    6. David Roodman, 2009. "How to do xtabond2: An introduction to difference and system GMM in Stata," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 9(1), pages 86-136, March.
    7. Woo, Jaejoon, 2003. "Economic, political, and institutional determinants of public deficits," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(3-4), pages 387-426, March.
    8. Alesina, Alberto & Drazen, Allan, 1991. "Why Are Stabilizations Delayed?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(5), pages 1170-1188, December.
    9. Manoel Bittencourt, 2011. "Is Copacabana Still the ‘Little Princess of the Sea’?," CESifo Forum, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 12(01), pages 11-16, March.
    10. Stephen R. Bond, 2002. "Dynamic panel data models: a guide to micro data methods and practice," Portuguese Economic Journal, Springer;Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestao, vol. 1(2), pages 141-162, August.
    11. Blundell, Richard & Bond, Stephen, 1998. "Initial conditions and moment restrictions in dynamic panel data models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 87(1), pages 115-143, August.
    12. Maria de los Angeles Gonzalez, 2002. "Do Changes in Democracy Affect the Political Budget Cycle? Evidence from Mexico," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 6(2), pages 204-224, June.
    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. Bittencourt, Manoel, 2012. "Inflation and economic growth in Latin America: Some panel time-series evidence," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 333-340.

    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. Manoel Bittencourt, 2012. "Economic Growth and Government Debt: Evidence from the Young Democracies of Latin America," Working Papers 201203, University of Pretoria, Department of Economics.
    2. Manoel Bittencourt, 2015. "Determinants of Government and External Debt: Evidence from the Young Democracies of South America," Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(3), pages 463-472, May.
    3. Manoel Bittencourt, 2018. "Young Democracies and Government Size: Evidence from South America," Working Papers 329, Economic Research Southern Africa.
    4. Hanusch, Marek & Keefer, Philip, 2014. "Younger parties, bigger spenders? Party age and political budget cycles," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 1-18.
    5. 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.
    6. Jooste, Charl & Liu, Guangling (Dave) & Naraidoo, Ruthira, 2013. "Analysing the effects of fiscal policy shocks in the South African economy," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 215-224.
    7. Georgios Efthyvoulou, 2012. "Political budget cycles in the European Union and the impact of political pressures," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 153(3), pages 295-327, December.
    8. Manoel Bittencourt, 2012. "Yet Another Look at the Modernisation Hypothesis: Evidence from Latin America," Working Papers 201205, University of Pretoria, Department of Economics.
    9. Manthos D. Delis & Sotirios Kokas & Steven Ongena, 2016. "Foreign Ownership and Market Power in Banking: Evidence from a World Sample," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 48(2-3), pages 449-483, March.
    10. Huy Quang Doan, 2019. "Trade, Institutional Quality and Income: Empirical Evidence for Sub-Saharan Africa," Economies, MDPI, vol. 7(2), pages 1-23, May.
    11. 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.
    12. Yang, Yong, 2012. "Agglomeration density and tourism development in China: An empirical research based on dynamic panel data model," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 33(6), pages 1347-1359.
    13. Kampelmann, Stephan & Rycx, François, 2012. "The impact of educational mismatch on firm productivity: Evidence from linked panel data," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(6), pages 918-931.
    14. Demir, Firat, 2010. "Exchange Rate Volatility and Employment Growth in Developing Countries: Evidence from Turkey," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 38(8), pages 1127-1140, August.
    15. Meschi, Elena & Taymaz, Erol & Vivarelli, Marco, 2011. "Trade, technology and skills: Evidence from Turkish microdata," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(S1), pages 60-70.
    16. Isis Gaddis & Stephan Klasen, 2014. "Economic development, structural change, and women’s labor force participation:," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 27(3), pages 639-681, July.
    17. Andres, Christian & Doumet, Markus & Fernau, Erik & Theissen, Erik, 2015. "The Lintner model revisited: Dividends versus total payouts," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 56-69.
    18. Matjaž Volk & Polona Trefalt, 2014. "Access to Credit as a Growth Constraint," Journal of Banking and Financial Economics, University of Warsaw, Faculty of Management, vol. 1(1), pages 29-39, May.
    19. Deodat E. Adenutsi & Meshach J. Aziakpono & Matthew K. Ocran, 2011. "The Changing Impact Of Macroeconomic Environment On Remittance Inflows In Sub-Saharan Africa," Journal of Academic Research in Economics, Spiru Haret University, Faculty of Accounting and Financial Management Constanta, vol. 3(2 (July)), pages 136-167.
    20. Davide Consoli & Francesco Vona & Francesco Rentocchini, 2016. "That was then, this is now: skills and routinization in the 2000s," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 25(5), pages 847-866.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Democracy; Government; Latin America;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H11 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - Structure and Scope of Government
    • N16 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations - - - Latin America; Caribbean
    • O11 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Macroeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • O54 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Latin America; Caribbean

    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:pre:wpaper:201113. 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: Rangan Gupta (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/decupza.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.