The dynamics of public investment under persistent electoral advantage

Marina Azzimonti

No 13-43, Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia

Abstract: This paper studies the effects of asymmetries in re-election probabilities across parties on public policy and their subsequent propagation to the economy. The struggle between groups that disagree on targeted public spending (e.g., pork) results in governments being endogenously short-sighted: Systematic underinvestment in infrastructure and overspending on targeted goods arise, above and beyond what is observed in symmetric environments. Because the party enjoying an electoral advantage is less short-sighted, it devotes a larger proportion of revenues to productive investment. Hence, political turnover induces economic fluctuations in an otherwise deterministic environment. I characterize analytically the longrun distribution of allocations and show that output increases with electoral advantage, despite the fact that governments expand. Volatility is non-monotonic in electoral advantage and is an additional source of inefficiency. Using panel data from US states I confirm these findings.

Keywords: Public; investments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-pbe and nep-pol
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Related works:
Journal Article: The dynamics of public investment under persistent electoral advantage (2015)
Working Paper: The dynamics of public investment under persistent electoral advantag (2012)
Working Paper: The dynamics of public investment under persistent electoral advantage (2011)
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