Political budget cycles and media freedom

Veiga, Francisco José, Veiga, Linda Gonçalves and Morozumi, Atsuyoshi, (2017). Political budget cycles and media freedom. Electoral Studies, 45 88-99

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  • Sub-type Journal article
    Author Veiga, Francisco José
    Veiga, Linda Gonçalves
    Morozumi, Atsuyoshi
    Title Political budget cycles and media freedom
    Appearing in Electoral Studies   Check publisher's open access policy
    Volume 45
    Publication Date 2017-02
    Place of Publication Amsterdam
    Publisher Elsevier
    Start page 88
    End page 99
    Language eng
    Abstract This paper examines the effects of elections on the conduct of central governments' fiscal policies. To do so, it uses a unique panel database that includes disaggregated spending and revenue series at the central government level for multiple countries over the 1975–2010 period. Examining political environments under which incumbent governments generate political budget cycles (PBCs), and comparing the relative importance of factors influencing cycles, we identify media freedom as the factor that plays the most critical role. This result provides a micro-foundation for rational opportunistic models for PBCs that rely on asymmetry of information about politicians' competence, and also offers a way to relate different conditioning factors of PBCs, including fiscal transparency and the maturity of democracies. Further, we show that the election-year rise in budget deficits under low media freedom is primarily driven by an increase in the current, not capital, component of public expenditure.
    Keyword Political budget cycles
    Central government
    Voter information
    Media freedom
    Fiscal policy composition
    Copyright Holder Elsevier
    Copyright Year 2017
    Copyright type All rights reserved
    ISSN 0261-3794
    DOI 10.1016/j.electstud.2016.11.008
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    Created: Tue, 13 Dec 2016, 02:57:39 JST by Mario Peixoto on behalf of UNU EGOV