Political Budget Cycles: Manipulation of Leaders or Bias from Research? A Meta-Regression Analysis

Antoine Cazals and Pierre Mandon
Additional contact information
Antoine Cazals: CERDI - Centre d'Études et de Recherches sur le Développement International - UdA - Université d'Auvergne - Clermont-Ferrand I - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Pierre Mandon: CERDI - Centre d'Études et de Recherches sur le Développement International - UdA - Université d'Auvergne - Clermont-Ferrand I - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Working Papers from HAL

Abstract: Despite a long history of research on political budget cycles, their existence and magnitude are still in question. By conducting a systematic analysis of the existing literature we intend to clarify the debate. Based on data collected from over 1,700 regressions and 58 studies, our meta-analysis suggests that leaders do manipulate fiscal tools in order to be re-elected but to an extent that is significantly exaggerated by scholars. However, we show the incumbents' strategy differ depending on which tools they leverage. Finally, we discuss in further details how authors' methodological choices and country institutions affect political budget cycles.

Keywords: Political cycles; Budget manipulation; Meta-analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-12-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-01238883
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://shs.hal.science/halshs-01238883/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:hal:wpaper:halshs-01238883

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().