Political Cycles in Public Expenditure: Butter vs Guns

Vincenzo Bove, Georgios Efthyvoulou and Antonio Navas ()

No 2013016, Working Papers from The University of Sheffield, Department of Economics

Abstract: This paper presents a theoretical model and empirical evidence from 22 OECD countries to highlight how governments may use the tradeoff between social and military expenditure to advance their electoral and partisan objectives. Three basic results emerge. First, governments tend to bias outlays towards social expenditure and away from military expenditure at election times. Second, the strength of this cycle is smaller when we exclude countries involved in conflict, where national security plays an important role on voter choice. Third, while certain categories of social expenditure are higher during left administrations, military expenditure is higher during right administrations.

Keywords: elections; partisanship; social expenditure; military expenditure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C33 D72 H53 H56 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 2013-10
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

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http://www.shef.ac.uk/economics/research/serps/articles/2013_016.html Updated version, August 2014 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Political cycles in public expenditure: butter vs guns (2017)
Working Paper: Political Cycles in Public Expenditure: Butter vs Guns (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:shf:wpaper:2013016

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