Suchergebnisse

Según algunos modelos teóricos, la manipulación electoral del gasto público puede tomar la forma de cambios en la composición del mismo, posiblemente sin afectar el déficit. La teoría también señala que la magnitud de cambios electorales en el gasto depende de las preferencias fiscales de los votantes. Este trabajo utiliza datos de gasto público y resultados electorales en municipios colombianos en un análisis integrado del comportamiento de los votantes y la dinámica del gasto público en periodos electorales. El hincapié es en la composición del presupuesto más que en su tamaño. Se encuentra que antes de elecciones los componentes del presupuesto que son más visibles y favorecidos por los votantes aumentan, mientras otros tipos de gasto caen. De manera congruente las perspectivas electorales futuras del partido en el poder son favorecidas por incrementos electorales del gasto "preferido", mientras que incrementos electorales del déficit tienen el efecto contrario.

This paper surveys the recent literature on the political economy of fiscal policy, in particular the accumulation of government debt. We examine three possible determinants of fiscal balances: opportunistic behavior by policymakers, heterogeneous fiscal preferences of either voters or politicians, and budget institutions. We focus on the contributions of the last 10 years and emphasize findings related to developing countries. We include a recent body of literature on the fiscal preferences of voters, which, interestingly, seems to suggest that voters do not favor highspending governments. We also report some original empirical evidence. First, we test different hypotheses from the political economy literature in a simultaneous manner for a large set of both developed and developing countries. We find that less-fragmented governments and a greater ability of voters to monitor fiscal policy are related to lower deficits; the estimated effects are larger than when the two hypotheses are evaluated separately, as the existing literature does. Second, we suggest the role of the courts in the determination of fiscal policy as a promising new avenue of research, and present some suggestive novel evidence on the importance of this channel.

We claim that, in presidential democracies, the effect of increasing fragmentation on government spending should be conditional on polarization, defined as the ideological distance between the government's party and other parties in Congress. We build a model where this result follows from negotiations between the legislature and an independent government seeking the approval of its initiatives—as in presidential democracies. Using cross‐country data over time, we test the empirical validity of our claim finding that, in presidential democracies, there is indeed a positive effect of fragmentation only when polarization is sufficiently high. The same is not true for parliamentary democracies.

This paper describes private actors' involvement in Colombia's policymaking process. While more transparent and formal channels are used to discuss horizontal policies, they are also less effective. The adoption of targeted policies, however, follows a faster track and depends more on political power than on those policies' potential as engines for productivity growth. Data targeted policies and political characteristics across sector-region units are used to further characterize the different groups' weight in policymaking, and the effect of the implied unbalance on aggregate productivity. Electoral weight and being represented by business groups and associations are found to be important determinants of the policy benefits received by a sector in a region, especially when activities are located in regions affected by armed conflict. It is also found that the resulting imbalance of policies damages aggregate productivity.

This paper describes private actors' involvement in Colombia's policymaking process. While more transparent and formal channels are used to discuss horizontal policies, they are also less effective. The adoption of targeted policies, however, follows a faster track and depends more on political power than on those policies' potential as engines for productivity growth. Data targeted policies and political characteristics across sector-region units are used to further characterize the different groups' weight in policymaking, and the effect of the implied unbalance on aggregate productivity. Electoral weight and being represented by business groups and associations are found to be important determinants of the policy benefits received by a sector in a region, especially when activities are located in regions affected by armed conflict. It is also found that the resulting imbalance of policies damages aggregate productivity.

This paper is devoted to understanding the role of public development banks in alleviating financial market imperfections. We explore two issues: 1) which types of firms should be optimally targeted by public financial support; and 2) what type of mechanism should be implemented in order to efficiently support the targeted firms access to credit. We model firms that face moral hazard and banks that have a costly screening technology, which results in a limited access to credit for some firms. We show that a public development bank may alleviate the inefficiencies by lending to commercial banks at subsidized rates, targeting the firms that generate high added value. This may be implemented through subsidized ear-marked lending to the banks or through credit guarantees which we show to be equivalent in "normal times". Still, when banks are facing a liquidity shortage, lending is preferred, while when banks are undercapitalized, a credit guarantees program is best suited. This will imply that 1) there is no "one size fits all" intervention program and 2) that any intervention program should be fine-tuned to accommodate the characteristics of competition, collateral, liquidity and banks capitalization of each industry.