Government Strength, Power Dispersion in Governments and Budget Deficits in OECD-Countries: A Voting Power Approach

Gerald Huber, Martin Kocher and Matthias Sutter

Public Choice, 2003, vol. 116, issue 3-4, 333-50

Abstract: We test for the influence of government strength and dispersion of power among the parties of coalition governments on the size of annual debt accumulation through budget deficits in OECD-countries from 1970 to 1999. Government strength and power dispersion in coalition governments are measured by the Banzhaf index of voting power, respectively the standard deviation of Banzhaf indices of coalition parties. We believe that these are better-suited proxies than most of what has been applied so far. Government strength turns out to be insignificant. However, coalitions with equally strong partners run significantly higher deficits than coalitions with one dominating party. Copyright 2003 by Kluwer Academic Publishers

Date: 2003
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (31)

Downloads: (external link)
http://journals.kluweronline.com/issn/0048-5829/contents link to full text (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Government strength, power dispersion in governments and budget deficits in OECD-countries. A voting power approach (2003)
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:kap:pubcho:v:116:y:2003:i:3-4:p:333-50

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ce/journal/11127/PS2

Access Statistics for this article

Public Choice is currently edited by WIlliam F. Shughart II

More articles in Public Choice from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().