Time horizons in budgeting

Daniel Tarschys

OECD Journal on Budgeting, 2003, vol. 2, issue 2, 77-103

Abstract: Public policy-makers operate with all measures of time horizon. They make short-term decisions as well as investments intended to benefit several generations. Though popular myth and public choice theory concur that politicians have their eyes fixed on nothing but the next election, there is a great deal of evidence to the contrary. As a rule there is a blend of time-frames and perspectives in the same actor. Attention leaps back and forth between the proximate and the distant. In their time orientation, elected officials share the ambivalence and volatility of their electorates. “A week is a long time in politics”, Harold Wilson once famously claimed when accused of inconsistency...

Date: 2003
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