Is There an Election Cycle in Public Employment? Separating Time Effects from Election Year Effects

Matz Dahlberg () and Eva Mörk ()

CESifo Economic Studies, 2011, vol. 57, issue 3, 480-498

Abstract: Do governments increase public employment in election years? This article answers this question by using data from Sweden and Finland, two countries that are similar in many respects but in which local elections are held at different points in time. These facts make it possible for us to separate an election effect from other time effects. Our results indicate that there is a statistically significant election year effect in local public employment, a production factor that is highly visible in the welfare services provided by the local governments in the Scandinavian countries. The effect also seems to be economically significant; the municipalities employ 0.6 more full-time employees per 1000 capita in election years than in other years (which correspond to an increase by approximately 1%). (JEL codes: D72, H72, P16) Copyright The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Ifo Institute for Economic Research, Munich. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com, Oxford University Press.

Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (41)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/cesifo/ifr003 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Is there an election cycle in public employment? Separating time effects from election year effects (2011)
Working Paper: Is There an Election Cycle in Public Employment? Separating Time Effects from Election Year Effects (2008)
Working Paper: Is there an election cycle in public employment? Separating time effects from election year effects (2008)
Working Paper: Is there an election cycle in public employment? Separating time effects from election year effects (2008)
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:oup:cesifo:v:57:y:2011:i:3:p:480-498

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

CESifo Economic Studies is currently edited by Panu Poutvaara

More articles in CESifo Economic Studies from CESifo Group Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().