The quest for political support drives to upward deviations from forecasted public deficits when i) budget procedures are soft, ii) breaking promises involving higher expenditures and lower taxes is costly in political terms, and iii) ex–post control by voters and political opposition is...

In this paper causality between taxes and expenditures is reexamined, suggesting that electoral cycle may be a relevant explicative factor. Using a data set from a wide sample of Spanish municipalities, I test if causal relationships between budgetary variables is effectively affected by the...