Political budget cycles and media freedom
| Autor: | Atsuyoshi Morozumi, Linda Gonçalves Veiga, Francisco Veiga |
|---|---|
| Přispěvatelé: | Universidade do Minho |
| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2017 |
| Předmět: |
Macroeconomics
Public economics Freedom of the press Voter information 05 social sciences Ciências Sociais::Economia e Gestão Social Sciences Public expenditure 0506 political science Politics Central government 0502 economics and business Political Science and International Relations 050602 political science & public administration Economics Revenue Media freedom Economia e Gestão [Ciências Sociais] Political budget cycles 050207 economics Competence (human resources) Fiscal policy composition |
| Zdroj: | Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (RCAAP) instacron:RCAAP |
| Popis: | This paper examines the effects of elections on the conduct of central governments' fiscal policies. To do so, it uses a unique panel database that includes disaggregated spending and revenue series at the central government level for multiple countries over the 1975–2010 period. Examining political environments under which incumbent governments generate political budget cycles (PBCs), and comparing the relative importance of factors influencing cycles, we identify media freedom as the factor that plays the most critical role. This result provides a micro-foundation for rational opportunistic models for PBCs that rely on asymmetry of information about politicians' competence, and also offers a way to relate different conditioning factors of PBCs, including fiscal transparency and the maturity of democracies. Further, we show that the election-year rise in budget deficits under low media freedom is primarily driven by an increase in the current, not capital, component of public expenditure. The authors thank Henry Chappell, Fabio Padovano, Klaus H. Goetz, Toke Aidt, and three anonymous referees for very valuable comments. This work was carried within the funding with COMPETE reference nº POCI-01-0145-FEDER-006683 (UID/ECO/03182/2013), with the FCT/MEC’s (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P.) financial support through national funding and by the ERDF through the Operational Programme on Competitiveness and Internationalization – COMPETE 2020 under the PT2020 Partnership Agreement. This research was also supported by the Programa Operacional da Região Norte, NORTE2020, in the context of project NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000037 (SmartEGOV). |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
| Externí odkaz: |
|