Despite the growing public debate on fiscal surprise during election periods in jurisdictions where the democratic … study provides evidence from the dynamic system GMM and the ordinry least squares estimators to show that- (1) election … servicing commitments even in election periods. Policy recommendations are provided in line with the growing levels of debt …

. 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 …