Voters’ Awareness as a Determinant of Political Budget Cycles: Evidence from Selected European Economies

Milutin Ješić and Aleksandra Prasceevic
Additional contact information
Aleksandra Prasceevic: Department for Economic Theory and Analysis, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Belgrade, Serbia

Czech Journal of Economics and Finance (Finance a uver), 2023, vol. 73, issue 2, 162-188

Abstract: This paper analyzes the presence of political budget cycles (PBC) in connection with the different levels of voter awareness in selected European countries. The characteristics of voters and their awareness of the real motives of incumbent politicians in conducting fiscal policy are of particular importance in PBC models. This study uses system GMM to estimate the dynamic panel data models that capture the behavior of structural budget balances. The models are estimated based on balanced panel data for 15 post-transition and low- and middle-income European countries during 2009–2018. One of the key explanatory variables is a Voter Awareness Index, based on Janku and Libich (2019) that is used to examine how structural budget balances differ between countries with different levels of voter awareness. The results indicate that countries with well-informed voters do not experience PBC, while those with poorly aware voters do. This study provides policy recommendations for improving voter awareness and weakening PBC.

Keywords: voters’ awareness; political budget cycles; system GMM method; post-transition countries; low- and middle-income countries (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C54 D72 E32 E62 H62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journal.fsv.cuni.cz/mag/article/show/id/1518 (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:fau:fauart:v:73:y:2023:i:2:p:162-188

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Czech Journal of Economics and Finance (Finance a uver) from Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Natalie Svarcova ().