Recent studies have highlighted the adverse impact of corruption on economic performance. This paper advances the … hypothesis that corruption is largely a symptom of underlying weaknesses in public policies and institutions, a formulation that … provides deeper insights into economic performance than do measures of “perceived corruption.” The hypothesis is tested by …

results of the system GMM revealed that the fiscal deficit is significantly large in election years and the deficit spending … spills into the year after the election, though not as high as in the election year. We could not, however, find a … significant effect in the pre-election year. In addition, we found evidence suggesting that though democracy significantly lowers …

very costly for the governments which implement them: they are punished by voters at the following elections. In the …

. We find that in election years with fiscal rules in place, public consumption is reduced by 1.6 percentage point of GDP … as compared to election years without these rules. This impact is equivalent to a reduction by a third of the volatility … institutional design, whether they have been in place for a long time and finally on the degree of competitiveness of elections …