This paper examines how policy affects social expenditures. Analyzing an OECD panel from 1980 to 2003, five political variables are tested: Election- and pre-election years, the ideological party composition of the governments, the number of coalition partners and the fact, if the ruling...

While existing cross-country studies on political budget cycles rely on annual data, we build a panel with quarterly and monthly data from Latin American and OECD countries over the 1980-2005 period. Disaggregated data allow to center the electoral year more precisely, and show the effects are...

This paper uses two-dimensional asymmetric Taylor reaction functions for 16 OECD-countries to account for different reactions to the inflation rate and output by central banks before or after an election of the fiscal authorities in the respective country. Important for such an investigation is...