Employing a sample of Spanish municipalities from the Madrid region for the period 2010-2019, we study the influence of a politician's sex on political budget cycles (PBCs). The Madrid region is subject to a homogenous set of budget rules, which allows consistently categorising budget...

Politicians are expected to influence policy outcomes in a way to gain electoral advantage. There is, however, a pending question whether efficiency in the provision of public goods and services is affected by strategic behavior. I examine how electoral cycles influence local government...

Employing a sample of Spanish municipalities from the Madrid region for the period 2010−2019, we study the influence of a politician’s sex on political budget cycles (PBCs). The Madrid region is subject to a homogenous set of budget rules, which allows consistently categorising budget...

This paper analyzes the occurrence of political budget cycles in 604 West German cities between 1975 and 2007. Due to the idiosyncratic timing of state and local elections, the budgetary changes before elections at two tiers of the federalist government can be separately estimated and can also...

We study the magnitude, the determinants and the electoral consequences of pre-electoral fiscal manipulation by incumbent politicians. To this aim, we build a dataset covering all the Italian municipalities. We document several facts. First, there is a clear political cycle in the path of...

In this paper, the authors examine the impact of municipal budget policy on the percentage of votes for the incumbent majority parties in subsequent elections. They contribute to the academic literature by examining the combined influence of taxes, expenditures and debt. Based on data for...

This paper analyzes local political cycle in Czech municipalities over the period between 1997 and 2013. We apply the system GMM and the difference GMM estimators to identify distortion in current and capital expenditures per capita in electoral and pre-electoral years, while focusing on various...

This paper exploits a natural experiment in Hesse where a reform of the electoral rule from mayor appointment by the local council towards direct mayor elections was introduced during a phase-in period from 1993 to 1998. The end of the term of the last appointed mayor varies across...

The paper analyzes local political cycle in Czech municipalities over the period between 1997 and 2013. We apply the system and the difference GMM estimators to detect electoral manipulation in current and capital expenditures in electoral and pre-electoral years. Primarily, we estimate the...

The opportunistic political cycle's theories argued that the incumbent raises the visible expenses in the election time. The paper presents an alternative case that the public planning cycle impedes the incumbent to hike these expenditures. As a short-cut, the incumbent prefers to increase the...