Does government ideology influence budget composition? Empirical evidence from OECD countries

Niklas Potrafke

No 2010-16, Working Paper Series of the Department of Economics, University of Konstanz from Department of Economics, University of Konstanz

Abstract: This paper examines whether government ideology has influenced the allocation of public expenditures in OECD countries. I analyze two datasets that report different expenditure categories and cover the time periods 1970-1997 and 1990-2006, respectively. The results suggest that government ideology has had a rather weak influence on the composition of governments’ budgets. Leftist governments, however, increased spending on “Public Services” in the period 1970-1997 and on “Education” in the period 1990-2006. These findings imply, first, that government ideology hardly influenced budgetary affairs in the last decades, and thus, if ideology plays a role at all, it influences non-budgetary affairs. Second, education has become an important expenditure category for leftist parties to signal their political visions to voters belonging to all societal groups.

Keywords: budget composition; public expenditures; government ideology; partisan politics; education policy; panel data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C23 D72 H50 H61 I28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38 pages
Date: 2010-12-13
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cwa, nep-pbe and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (94)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Does government ideology influence budget composition? Empirical evidence from OECD countries (2011)
Working Paper: Does government ideology influence budget composition? Empirical evidence from OECD countries (2011)
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