Political Budget Cycles with Informed Voters: Evidence from Italy

IF 3.8 2区经济学 Q1 ECONOMICS

Economic Journal Pub Date : 2017-12-08 DOI:10.1111/ecoj.12570

Luca Repetto

引用次数: 86

Abstract

I exploit a reform that required Italian municipalities to disclose their balance sheets before elections to study whether having more informed voters affects the political budget cycle. Municipal investment in the year before elections is 28.5% higher than in electoral years, and the reform reduced this pre-electoral spending increase by one third. I then study the role of local newspapers in disseminating municipal financial information to voters and find that the effect of the reform is twice as large in areas with relatively many newspaper readers, suggesting that mayors react to more informed voters by reducing spending manipulation.

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政治预算周期与知情选民:来自意大利的证据

我利用一项要求意大利市政当局在选举前披露其资产负债表的改革，来研究更多知情的选民是否会影响政治预算周期。选举前一年的市政投资比选举年高出28.5%，改革将选举前的支出增加减少了三分之一。然后，我研究了地方报纸在向选民传播市政财政信息方面的作用，发现在报纸读者相对较多的地区，改革的效果是两倍，这表明市长通过减少支出操纵来应对更知情的选民。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Economic Journal ECONOMICS-

CiteScore

6.60

自引率

3.10%

发文量

期刊介绍： The Economic Journal is the Royal Economic Society''s flagship title, and is one of the founding journals of modern economics. Over the past 125 years the journal has provided a platform for high quality and imaginative economic research, earning a worldwide reputation excellence as a general journal publishing papers in all fields of economics for a broad international readership. It is invaluable to anyone with an active interest in economic issues and is a key source for professional economists in higher education, business, government and the financial sector who want to keep abreast of current thinking in economics.