Political Cycles in a Developing Economy

Political Cycles in a Developing Economy PDF Author: Stuti Khemani
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN:
Category : Business cycles
Languages : en
Pages : 58

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Book Description
Empirical results from India suggest that politicians exert greater effort in managing public works during election years. Surprisingly, there is no evidence of a populist spending spree to sway voters just before elections.

Political Cycles in a Developing Economy

Political Cycles in a Developing Economy PDF Author: Stuti Khemani
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN:
Category : Business cycles
Languages : en
Pages : 58

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Book Description
Empirical results from India suggest that politicians exert greater effort in managing public works during election years. Surprisingly, there is no evidence of a populist spending spree to sway voters just before elections.

Political Cycles in a Developing Economy

Political Cycles in a Developing Economy PDF Author: Stuti Khemani
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 54

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Book Description
Empirical results from India suggest that politicians exert greater effort in managing public works during election years. Surprisingly, there is no evidence of a populist spending spree to sway voters just before elections.Khemani studies the effect of state legislative assembly elections on the policies of state governments in 14 major states of India, from 1960 to 1994. She identifies the effect of the timing of elections using an instrument for the electoral cycle that distinguishes between constitutionally scheduled elections and midterm polls. She contrasts two levers of policy manipulation-fiscal policy and public service delivery-to distinguish between alternative models of political cycles. The predictions of three models are tested:- Populist cycles to woo uninformed and myopic voters.- Signaling models with asymmetric information.- A moral hazard model with high discounting by political agents.The empirical results for fiscal policy show that election years have a negative effect on some commodity taxes, a positive effect on investment spending, but no effect on deficits, primarily because consumption spending is reduced. With regard to public service delivery, elections have a positive and large effect on road construction by state public works departments. Strikingly, the fiscal effects are much smaller than the effect on roads.Khemani argues that the pattern of evidence is inconsistent with the predictions of models of voter myopia and asymmetric information. She explores an alternative moral hazard model in which the cycle is generated by high political discounting and career concerns persuade politicans to exert greater effort in election years on the management of public works.This paper - a product of Public Economics, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to understand the effect of political institutions on public policy. The author may be contacted at [email protected].

Political Cycles and the Macroeconomy

Political Cycles and the Macroeconomy PDF Author: Alberto Alesina
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262510943
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
This book examines how electoral laws, the timing of election, the ideological orientation of governments, and the nature of competition between political parties influence unemployment, economic growth, inflation, and monetary and fiscal policy. The book presents both a thorough overview of the theoretical literature and a vast amount of empirical evidence.

The Politics of Exchange Rates in Developing Countries

The Politics of Exchange Rates in Developing Countries PDF Author: Ralph Setzer
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3790817163
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
This book considers the issue of exchange rate policymaking from a political economy perspective. It illustrates both theoretically and empirically how domestic political and institutional incentives shape exchange rate policies in developing countries. Empirical analysis is based on a panel survey of 47 countries and thereby provides insights on how political and institutional conditions typically affect exchange rate policy.

A Theory of Political and Economic Cycles

A Theory of Political and Economic Cycles PDF Author: Laurence Ales
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Economics
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
We develop a theoretical framework in which political and economic cycles are jointly determined. These cycles are driven by three political economy frictions: policymakers are non-benevolent, they cannot commit to policies, and they have private information about the tightness of the government budget and rents. Our first main result is that, in the best sustainable equilibrium, distortions to production emerge and never disappear even in the long run. This result is driven by the interaction of limited commitment and private information on the side of the policymaker, since in the absence of either friction, there are no long run distortions to production. Our second result is that, if the variance of private information is sufficiently large, there is equilibrium turnover in the long run so that political cycles never disappear. Finally, our model produces a long run distribution of taxes, distortions, and turnover, where these all respond persistently to temporary economic shocks. We show that the model's predictions are consistent with the empirical evidence on the interaction of political and economic cycles in developing countries.

The Political Economy of Innovation Development

The Political Economy of Innovation Development PDF Author: Iurii Bazhal
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319548522
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
This book finds that the R&D and technological innovation of a country is not a result, but a factor, of sustained economic growth. Bazhal develops Schumpeter's theory to argue that genuine economic growth - especially in transitioning and developing countries - is only possible with innovation. With a particular focus on the work of Ukrainian economists, Tugan-Batanobvsky and Vernadsky, the text seeks to move the discipline forward and explain why innovation has become a primary factor of economic development in recent decades and why its role will become even more dominant in the future. Chapters interrogate whether modern economic theory can explain how we ensure the effective functioning of the market economy. The book shows that explanations of economists and politicians regarding the nature of the current economic and financial crisis, and the causes of huge gaps in levels of wealth in market economies, demonstrates that there are not enough satisfactory answers to this question.

Political business cycles in a democracy

Political business cycles in a democracy PDF Author: Andrei Horlau
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3656404135
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 19

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Book Description
Seminar paper from the year 2012 in the subject Politics - Topic: Globalization, Political Economics, grade: 2,7, Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel (Institut für Sozialwissenschaften), course: Governing the crisis: how democracies deal with adverse economic conditions, language: English, abstract: Various economic difficulties and economic crises can be challenges for democratic political systems. In some cases it can lead to social cataclysms and even destruction of political systems. In this connection, different political actors offer different programs in order to solve current socio-economic problems. However, according to the modern economic theory the free market economy develops cyclical, and the period of recession always comes after the recovery. There is the conception of political business cycles, which confirm it. Nevertheless political parties often have to carry out the policies and even take part in elections in conditions of economic crises. In some cases they even have to change their programs or significantly correct them in order to keep their voters. In this way, the problem of this term paper is the following one: what are the implications for political parties if they stand for elections in times of crises and their behavior towards voters is either opportunistic or ideological? In order to give the answer for this question which is actual for the current European sovereign debt crisis it is first of all necessary to define political business cycle and to describe their models, which also include the concepts of the parties’ behavior as well as their interaction with voters and issues. Then the role of political business cycles in the economic crises will be explained. The understanding of the nature of political business cycles and the activities of political parties in them reveal the implications which the parties face by elections in times of crises. It can be also helpful for overcoming the consequences of the crisis with simultaneously saving of political stability.

Political Economy, Growth, and Business Cycles

Political Economy, Growth, and Business Cycles PDF Author: Alex Cukierman
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262031943
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 430

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Book Description
These original contributions by some of today's leading macroeconomists and political economists explore a broad spectrum of social, political, and technological variables that encourage or impede economic growth. What political and economic factors stimulate growth and make an economy expand? These original contributions by some of today's leading macroeconomists and political economists explore a broad spectrum of social, political, and technological variables that encourage or impede economic growth. Topics range from economic reform and price flexibility to the economic effects of political coups and include both theoretical analysis and empirical results.During the past decade, economists have seen important new developments linking growth and business cycles to government policy. These contributions provide a clear understanding of these processes and their effect in shaping economic policy. They look at the welfare side of economics and offer strong economic models to explain the connection between social policies and economic growth. For example, John Londregan and Keith Poole address the economic effects of political coups, Torsten Persson and Guido Tabellini explore the question of whether inequality is harmful for growth, and Stephen Parente and Edward Prescott look at the role of technology adoption in stimulating growth.The essays cover a wide range of approaches. Several focus on the interaction between growth and the choice of policy, where policy reacts to economic and distributional considerations through a majority rule process. Others take the policy as given and focus on the empirical estimation of the speed of convergence of rates of growth across states and regions and the importance of externalities and knowledge spillovers for rates of growth. Essays about the business cycle fall into two broad categories. One, arising from the new political economy tradition, examines the effects of elections and price decontrols on the business cycle. The other explores the implications of optimal economic policies in a representative agent framework for the cyclical behavior of the economy.

Political Business Cycles

Political Business Cycles PDF Author: Bruno S. Frey
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 9781858983998
Category : Business cycles
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A collection of articles on how the government influences the economy in order to secure re-election. This book surveys the empirical and major theoretical approaches, such as vote maximization, partisan and vote-cum-partisan models, and rational political business cycles. It provides extensions including the role of the central bank, of direct democracy, and the cycles in European communist countries, as well as discussing policy relevance.

Political Business Cycles

Political Business Cycles PDF Author: Thomas D. Willett
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822308423
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 554

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Book Description
"A Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy book." Includes bibliographies and index.