Presidents in Deficit: Are there Historical Rewards to Deficits?

Abstract

Buchanan and Wagner pointed to an asymmetry in the political rewards of deficits and surpluses, with the former being preferable to the latter. They assigned the rise of this asymmetry to the popularization of Keynesian ideas. We test both claims by relying on the historical reputation surveys of US presidents since 1948. Historical reputations have long been something presidents have cared about, and they constitute a reliable way to assess whether their reputations suffer or gain from having run deficits. We find evidence that the size of deficits tends to be associated with greater presidential scores and that this effect is stronger in more recent surveys, when Keynesian ideas were more popular.