Until recently, most research on political budget cycles was based on the (often implicit) presumption that these cycles do not differ across countries. However, more recent studies focus on heterogeneity. This paper surveys studies examining the factors conditioning the occurrence and strength...

This paper addresses two empirical questions. Is fiscal policy affected by upcoming elections? If so, do election-motivated fiscal policies enhance the probability of re-election of the incumbent? Employing data for 65 democratic countries over 1975–2005 in a semi-pooled panel model, we find...

This study examines the influence of upcoming general elections on the sales revenues of major defense companies. The direction of this effect is theoretically not a priori clear as governments face a trade-off in an election year. On the one hand, the incumbent cabinet might try to increase the...

We examine to what extent there exists heterogeneity in the causes of a banking crisis. For this purpose, we use a random coefficient logit model including 110 countries between 1970 and 2007. We conclude that there exists significant heterogeneity in the causes of a banking crisis. We find that...

Using data for more than 200 banks from 21 OECD countries for the period 2002 to 2008, we examine the impact of bank regulation and supervision on banking risk. Supervisory control, and regulations on capital and market entry have a significant impact on 'capital and asset risk', while...