Overlapping political budget cycles in the legislative and the executive

Arbeitspapier

We advance the literature on political budget cycles by testing separately for cycles in expenditures for elections in the legislative and the executive. Using municipal data, we can separately identify these cycles and account for general year effects. For the executive branch, we show that it is important whether the incumbent re-runs. To account for the potential endogeneity associated with this decision, we apply a unique instrumental variables approach based on age and pension eligibility rules. We find sizable and significant effects in expenditures before council elections and before joint elections when the incumbent re-runs.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: DIW Discussion Papers ; No. 1429

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Structure, Scope, and Performance of Government ; State and Local Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue ; State and Local Budget and Expenditures ; State and Local Borrowing
• Subject: election cycles ; municipal expenditures ; council and mayor elections ; instrumental variables approach

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Foremny, Dirk ; Freier, Ronny ; Moessinger, Marc-Daniel ; Yeter, Mustafa
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW)
• (where): Berlin
• (when): 2014

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/104722
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET