Political Cycles in OECD Economies.

This paper studies whether the dynamic behavior of GNP growth, unemployment, and inflation is affected by elections and changes of governments. The sample includes the last three decades in eighteen OECD economies. The authors' results are as follows: (1) the "political business cycle" hypothesis on output and employment is rejected; (2) inflation tends to increase immediately after elections; (3) they find evidence of temporary partisan differences in output and unemployment and of long-run partisan differences in the inflation rate; and (4) they find virtually no evidence of permanent partisan differences in output growth and unemployment. Copyright 1992 by The Review of Economic Studies Limited.