The Political Economy of Budget Deficits in the European Union

Markus Freitag and Pascal Sciarini
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Markus Freitag: Institute of Political Science, University of Bern, Switzerland
Pascal Sciarini: IDHEAP, Lausanne, Switzerland

European Union Politics, 2001, vol. 2, issue 2, 163-189

Abstract: This article tries to evaluate the impact of domestic and international factors on both deficits and deficit reduction in the European Union. Based on data covering 14 countries and 20 fiscal years (1978-97) we test the major hypotheses in the political economy literature. Beyond the investigation of the causes of cross-sectional variations in budget outcomes, we are also interested in changing patterns of influences over time, resulting from so-called `structural breaks'. On the one hand, our pooled time-series analyses show that very few political and institutional factors influenced the budget outcomes of the EU member states during this period. On the other hand, our estimation results provide suggestive support for our assumption that `Maastricht' amounted to a decisive structural break.

Keywords: budget deficit; comparative political economy; EMU; Maastricht (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2001
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:eeupol:v:2:y:2001:i:2:p:163-189

DOI: 10.1177/1465116501002002002

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