Partisanship and fiscal policy co-ordination in a monetary union

Abstract

The recent economic literature shows a new interest in the links between politics and economics. In this paper, we join Hibbs’ partisanship theory with the literature of fiscal policies international co- ordination. Furthermore, by considering a monetary union context, we also open a new angle of view in the recent debate on the effects of the European Monetary Union. In fact, by considering the possibility of governments’ partisan behaviour, we analyse the possibility for governments of internalising macroeconomic spillovers deriving from public expenditure at a national level and investigate the interactions between fiscal and monetary authorities. This paper also partially answers recent concern for considering multi-player contexts and asymmetries in open economy analyses. Here, in fact, several kinds of co-operation and the effects of asymmetries in players' preferences are studied (e.g. the asymmetries in the governments’ preference due to their partisanship).partisanship, monetary union, international cooperation, policy games