EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Macroeconomic Policy and Elections in OECD Democracies

Alberto Alesina, Gerald D. Cohen and Nouriel Roubini ()

No 3830, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to test for evidence of opportunistic "political business cycles" in a large sample of 18 OECD economies. Our results can be summarized as follows: 1) We find very little evidence of pre-electoral effects of economic outcomes, in particular, on GDP growth and unemployment; 2) We see some evidence of "political monetary cycles." that is, expansionary monetary policy in election years; 3) We also observe indications of "political budget cycles," or "loose" fiscal policy prior to elections; 4) Inflation exhibits a postelectoral jump, which could be explained by either the preelectoral "loose" monetary and fiscal policies and/or by an opportunistic timing of increases in publicly controlled prices, or indirect taxes.

Date: 1991-09
Note: ME
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Published as Economics and Politics, 4, pp.1-30 March 1992
Published as in Political Economy, Growth and Business Cycles, Alex Cukierman, Zvi Hercovitz, and Leonardo Leiderman (eds.), MIT Press, 1992.
Published as Alberto Alesina & Gerald D. Cohen & Nouriel Roubini, 1992. "MACROECONOMIC POLICY AND ELECTIONS IN OECD DEMOCRACIES," Economics and Politics, vol 4(1), pages 1-30.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w3830.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: MACROECONOMIC POLICY AND ELECTIONS IN OECD DEMOCRACIES* (1992) Downloads
Working Paper: Macroeconomic Policy and Elections in OECD Democracies (1992) Downloads
Working Paper: Macroeconomic Policy and Elections in OECD Democracies (1992) Downloads
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:nbr:nberwo:3830

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w3830

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:3830