Political Business Cycles and Russian Elections, or the Manipulations of Chudar

Daniel Treisman and Vladimir Gimpelson

No CIRJE-F-39, CIRJE F-Series from CIRJE, Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo

Abstract: Political business cycle theories tend to focus on one policy instrument or macroeconomic lever at a time. Efforts to find empirical evidence of opportunistic business cycles have turned up rather meager results. We suggest that these facts may be related. If ways of manipulating the economy to win votes are thought of as substitutes, with changing relative costs, one would expect rational policy makers to switch between them in different periods as costs change. We illustrate this argument with a discussion of Russia. In Russia, four nationwide votes have been held since 1993. We deduce the set of policies that a rational, behind-the-scenes strategist--the "Chudar" of the title--would recommend to an incumbent who believes the voters to vote retrospectively. We show that the expectations are born out closely in the actual macroeconomic data.

Pages: 31 pages
Date: 1999-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pol
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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Journal Article: Political Business Cycles and Russian Elections, or the Manipulations of ‘Chudar’ (2001)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tky:fseres:99cf39

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