In time of worry for large deficits, the question on whether direct democracy can be a problem or a promise to better rule modern societies may arise. Both theoretical and empirical studies provide mixed answers. This paper investigates both the indirect (i.e. the existence) and the direct...

This paper investigates whether the socioeconomic status of the head of government helps explain fiscal performance. Applying sociological research that attributes differences in people's ways of thinking and acting to their relative standing within society, we test whether the social status of...

This paper tests the theory of opportunistic cycles in a decade-old democracy, Russia, finds strong evidence of cycles, and provides explanation for why previous literature often found weaker evidence. Using the comprehensive list of Russia's regional elections and regional monthly panel data...

The main objective of this paper is to analyze empirically the effects of government spending on private investment, evaluating the existence of crowding-out/-in effects, in Turkey for the 1975-2011 period. In contrast to revious studies, we employed in the paper the modified version of David A....

We analyse how fiscal decentralization affects the volatility of government consumption extending the existing literature that mainly deals with the effects of the former on government size. Using data for 97 developed and developing countries from 1971 to 2010, we find that a higher degree of...

From the policy mix theory to the related empirical works, quantifying the degree of coordination of monetary and fiscal policies seems to be missing. In this paper, we propose an index (ICPM) which measures the coherent nature of the policy mix rather than it restrictive or expansive character....

From the policy mix theory to the related empirical works, the quantification of the coordination of monetary and fiscal policies seems to be missing. In this paper, we propose an index (PMCI) which measures the coherent nature of the policy mix rather than it restrictive or expansive character....

It is commonly believed that higher budget deficits raise interest rates. However, these crowding out effects of increasing public debt have usually been found to be small or non-existent. One explanation is that on globalised bond markets interest rate differentials are offset due to financial...

This paper analyses the relationship between income inequality and economic growth through fiscal policy. To this end, we present and estimate two systems of structural equations with error components through which gross income inequality determines different fiscal policy outcomes, which...

In this paper, we study the effects of fiscal policy during different fiscal policy regimes. More specifically, we investigate how different factors, such as size, duration and composition of fiscal changes, can alter the effects of fiscal policy on private consumption. Using an unbalanced panel...