This paper discusses the emergence of endogenous redistributive cycles in a stochastic growth model with incomplete asset markets and heterogeneous agents, where agents vote on the degree of progressivity in the tax.transfer.scheme. The model draws from Bénabou (1996) and ties the bias in the...

Using an extended data set of EU countries ranging from 1971-2006 and relevant econometric methods, we investigate the economic, political, and institutional determinants of government deficits in the EU. The results show a strong opportunistic behaviour of policymakers which leads to political...

We use a new approach to assess long-term fiscal developments. By analyzing the time varying behaviour of the two components of government spending and revenue responsiveness and persistence - we are able to infer about the sources of fiscal behaviour. Drawing on quarterly data we estimate...

This note shows in what circumstances output persistence may invert the pattern of the political business cycle when inflation expectations are of the adaptive or rational type and the government preferences are quadratic over output and inflation.