Political Institutions and Policy Outcomes: What are the Stylized Facts?

Torsten Persson () and Guido Tabellini

No 412, Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) from Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area

Abstract: We investigate the effect of electoral rules and political regimes on fiscal policy outcomes in a panel of 61 democracies from 1960 and onwards. In presidential regimes, the size of government is smaller and less responsive to income shocks, compared to parliamentary regimes. Under majoritarian elections, social transfers are smaller and aggregate spending less responsive to to income shocks than under proportional elections. Institutions also shape electoral cycles; only in presidential regimes is fiscal adjustment delayed until after the elections, and only in proportional and parliamentary systems do social transfers expand around elections. Several of these empirical regularities are in line with recent theoretical work; others are still awaiting a theoretical explanation.

Keywords: comparative politics; constitution; fiscal policy; elections; democracies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2001-08
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (108)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.bancaditalia.it/pubblicazioni/temi-disc ... 0412/tema_412_01.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Political Institutions and Policy Outcomes: What Are the Stylized Facts? (2001)
Working Paper: Political Institutions and Policy Outcomes: What are the Stylized Facts? (2001)
Working Paper: Political Institutions and Policy Outcomes: What are the Stylized Facts?
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:bdi:wptemi:td_412_01

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) from Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().