The political budget cycle (PBC) literature argues that governments expand deficits in election years. However, what happens when an economic downturn is expected? Will the government allow the deficit to expand even further, or will it resort to spending cuts and tax increases? When voters...

The literature on political business cycles follows two analytical conventions: (1) polity is reasonably reduced to a single agent who is either opportunistic or partisan and (2) economy is an equilibrated entity that is subject to politically inspired shocks. This paper pursues a different...

The Variable Rational Partisan Business Cycle model is developed, where agents face uncertainty regarding the timing and outcome of the next election. The model predicts that partisan influences on the economy persist throughout the government's rule and are further influenced, in the opposite...

Recent studies have suggested the existence of election-year economics in fiscal policy in transition countries. This study asks whether such electoral cycles in aggregate measures (overall expenditures, revenues and balance) and spending composition (broad vs. targeted outlays) differ among...

The dissertation elaborates on topics that are related to (i) intergenerational transfers of wealth and to (ii) how government ideology and elections influence outcomes (income inequality and budget consolidation) and political processes (fiscal planning and policy advice). The dissertation...

Classical theory considers political business cycle as a result of either opportunistic behavior of government (opportunistic cycle) or aiming policy on certain constituency (partisan cycle). In this paper, we propose an alternative explanation of the phenomenon of political business cycle —...

The literature on the rational political business cycle suggests that politicians systematically manipulate economic and fiscal conditions before elections to increase their chance of gaining reelection. Most tests of this theory look for evidence of pre- election distortions in fiscal policy....

This empirical research aims to test for the presence of opportunistic electoral business cycles in Ukraine. National and regional-level data on budget revenues and expenditures, output, unemployment rate, wages, and wage arrears (and prices, subject to the availability of data) will be...