Fiscal Transparency and Procyclical Fiscal Policy

This paper examines why fiscal policy is procyclical in developing as well as developed countries. We introduce the concept of fiscal transparency into a model of retrospective voting, in which a political agency problem between voters and politicians generates a procyclical bias in government spending. The introduction of fiscal transparency generates two new predictions: 1) the procyclical bias in fiscal policy arises only in good times; and 2) a higher degree of fiscal transparency reduces the bias in good times. We find solid empirical support for both predictions using data on both OECD countries and a broader set of countries.fiscal transparency; fiscal policy; procyclicality; business cycle; political economy

Late Budgets

The budget forms the legal basis of government spending. If a budget is not in place at the beginning of the fiscal year, planning as well as current spending are jeopardized and government shutdown may result. This paper develops a continuous-time war-of-attrition model of budgeting in a presidential style-democracy to explain the duration of budget negotiations. We build our model around budget baselines as reference points for loss averse negotiators. We derive three testable hypotheses: there are more late budgets, and they are more late, when fiscal circumstances change; when such changes are negative rather than positive; and when there is divided government. We test the hypotheses of the model using a unique data set of late budgets for US state governments, based on dates of budget approval collected from news reports and a survey of state budget o¢ cers for the period 1988-2007. For this period, we find 23 % of budgets to be late. The results provide strong support for the hypotheses of the model.government budgeting; state government; presidential democracies; political economy; late budgets; fiscal stalemate; war of attrition

The Impact of Fiscal Governance on Bond Markets: Evidence from Late Budgets and State Government Borrowing Costs

Does fiscal governance affect government borrowing costs? We operationalize fiscal governance as the ability of governments to pass a budget on time and, using a unique data set on budget enactment dates, analyze the effect of such late budgets on government bond yield spreads. Based on a sample of 36 US states in the period 1988-1997, we estimate that a budget delay of 30 days has a long run impact on the yield spread between 2 and 10 basis points. States with sufficient liquidity in the form of large reserves face small or no costs from late budgets.fiscal governance; political deadlock; late budgets; fiscal stalemate; Chubb relative value survey; debt cost; bond spreads