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Political Business Cycles and Macroeconomic Credibility: A Survey

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  • Price, Simon

Abstract

There is clear evidence that government popularity and election performance is affected, in part, by economic performance, suggesting that governments may manipulate the economy to political advantage. Simple models incorporating adaptive expectations which allowed the government to exploit this relationship were developed in the 1970s, but fell out of fashion with the advent of new-classical economics. However, modern theories of the political business cycle, which are closely related to the macroeconomic policy game literature, assume rational expectations, and lead to forms of political business cycle, driven by the existence of uncertainty of one type or another. The international evidence suggests that some aspects of the theories apply, although definitive conclusions are--as we might expect--hard to come by. Copyright 1997 by Kluwer Academic Publishers

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  • Price, Simon, 1997. "Political Business Cycles and Macroeconomic Credibility: A Survey," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 92(3-4), pages 407-427, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:92:y:1997:i:3-4:p:407-27
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    8. Keshab Bhattarai, 2015. "Financial deepening and economic growth," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(11), pages 1133-1150, March.
    9. Eric Dubois, 2016. "Political Business Cycles 40 Years after Nordhaus," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) hal-01291401, HAL.
    10. Cristiana Fiorelli & Nicola Pontarollo & Carolina Serpieri, 2022. "Legislative interventions for the Italian local public financial distress," Working Papers in Public Economics 219, Department of Economics and Law, Sapienza University of Roma.
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