In this short note, we use data from different elections in the German state of North-Rhine Westphalia between 1975 and 2010 to show that the social democrats generally profit from higher voter turnout at the expense of the conservatives. We deal with the endogeneity of voter turnout by using...

We provide new evidence on the short-run effect of elections on monetary aggregates. We study month-to-month fluctuations in the growth rate of M1 in a sample of 85 low and middle income democracies from 1975 to 2009. The evidence shows an increase in the growth rate of M1 during election months...

I exploit a reform that required Italian municipalities to disclose their balance sheetsbefore elections to study whether having more informed voters aects the political budgetcycle. To start, investment spending in the year before elections is 28.5% higher thanin the election year and this...

Using an unbalanced panel of 27 OECD countries over the period 1970-2011, I examine whether electoral motives influenced creative accounting. Governments engage in "below-the-line" operations, such as transactions in financial assets, that do not show up in the deficit figures but give rise to...

A growing literature suggests that office motivated politicians manipulate fiscal policy instruments in order to seek their re-election. This paper investigates the impact of electoral manipulation of the level and composition of fiscal policy on incumbent’s re-election prospects. This impact...

This paper studies whether the evidence supports the political business cycle (PBC) theory, partisan theory (PT) and rational partisan theory (RPT) by using stock market data from Turkey, a rapidly growing developing economy. In addition, we examine the impact of political events on the returns...

We study how the proximity of elections affects policy choices in a model in which policymakers want to improve their reputation to increase their reelection chances. Policymakers' equilibrium decisions depend on both their reputation and the proximity of the next election. Typically, incentives...

Governments can finance fiscal expansions with debt to appear competent and boost their electoral prospects, resulting in a political budget cycle. This article shows that economic disturbances blur competence signals, dampening political budget cycles. Economic disturbances can be construed at...

We use real‐time annual data on the fiscal balance, government current spending, current revenues and net capital outlays as published at a half yearly frequency in the OECD Economic Outlook for 25 OECD countries. For each fiscal year t we have a number of forecasts, a first release, and...

We use real-time annual data on the fiscal balance, government current spending, current revenues and net capital outlays as published at a half yearly frequency in the OECD Economic Outlook for 25 OECD countries. For each fiscal year t we have a number of forecasts, a first release, and...