Discretional political budget cycles and separation of powers

Jorge Streb (), Daniel Lema () and Gustavo Torrens

No 286, CEMA Working Papers: Serie Documentos de Trabajo. from Universidad del CEMA

Abstract: In contrast to previous empirical work on electoral cycles, which implicitly assumes the executive has full discretion over fiscal policy, this paper contends that under separation of powers an unaligned legislature may have a moderating role. Focusing on the budget surplus, we find that stronger effective checks and balances explain why cycles are weaker in developed and established democracies. Once the discretional component of executive power is isolated, there are significant cycles in all democracies. Whether the political system is presidential or parliamentary, or the electoral rules are majoritarian or proportional, does not change the basic results.

Keywords: political budget cycles; asymmetric information; discretion; separation of powers; checks and balances; veto players; rule of law (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D78 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mic and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.ucema.edu.ar/publicaciones/download/documentos/286.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Checks and Balances on Political Budget Cycles: Cross‐Country Evidence (2009)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cem:doctra:286

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEMA Working Papers: Serie Documentos de Trabajo. from Universidad del CEMA Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Valeria Dowding ().