Conventional wisdom is that good economic conditions or expansionary fiscal policy help incumbents get re-elected, but this has not been tested in a large cross-section of countries. We test these arguments in a sample of 74 countries over the period 1960-2003. We find no evidence that deficits...

We review research on political budget cycles across countries, including recent findings that they are a phenemenon of new democracies and are statistically insignificant in old, established democracies. We then consider what may account for this and review several hypotheses. Recent empirical...

We test conventional wisdom that good economic conditions and expansionary fiscal policy help incumbents get reelected in a panel of 74 democracies over 1960-2003. We find no evidence that deficits help reelection in any group of countries independent of level of development, level or age of...

Conventional wisdom is that good economic conditions or expansionary fiscal policy help incumbents get re-elected, but this has not been tested in a large cross-section of countries. We test these arguments in a sample of 74 countries over the period 1960-2003. We find no evidence that deficits...