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We examine whether governments' natural resource rents are affected by upcoming elections and if so, whether the incumbent uses these additional rents for re-election purposes. Estimates of a dynamic panel model for about 60 countries for 1975-2011 suggest that elections increase natural resource rents. The incumbent uses these rents for expanding public spending and reducing taxes before elections. However, these electoral cycle effects are statistically significant only in young democracies. Our results also suggest that election effects are stronger in countries with limited access to free media, limited political checks and balances, and a presidential system.

This paper addresses two empirical questions. Is fiscal policy affected by upcoming elections? If so, do election-motivated fiscal policies enhance the probability of re-election of the incumbent? Employing data for 65 democratic countries over 1975-2005 in a semi-pooled panel model, we find that in most countries fiscal policy is hardly affected by elections. The countries for which we find a significant political budget cycle are very diverse. They include 'young' democracies but also 'established' democracies. In countries with a political budget cycle, election-motivated fiscal policies have a significant positive (but fairly small) effect on the electoral support for the political parties in government.

We examine the relationship between different dimensions of the political regime in place and human capital using a two-step structural equation model. In the first step, we employ factor analysis on 16 human capital indicators to construct two new human capital measures (basic and advanced human capital). In the second step, we estimate the impact of our political variables on human capital, using a cross-sectional structural model for some 100 countries. We conclude that democracy is positively related to basic human capital, while regime instability has a negative link with basic human capital. Governance has a positive relationship with advanced human capital, while government instability has a negative link with advanced human capital. Finally, we also find an indirect positive effect of governance and democracy on both types of human capital through their effect on income.

International audience ; Most recent cross-country studies on election-motivated fiscal policy assume that the data can be pooled. As various tests suggest that our data for some 70 democratic countries for the period 1970-2007 cannot be pooled, we use the Pooled Mean Group (PMG) estimator to test whether political budget cycles (PBCs) exist in our sample. We find that fiscal policy is only affected by upcoming elections in the short run. Our results suggest that the occurrence of a PBC is conditional on the level of development and democracy, government transparency, the country's political system, its membership of a monetary union and its degree of political polarization.

This year's volume of the Netherlands Annual Review of Military Studies (NL ARMS) offers an interdisciplinary view on the domain of Compliance and Integrity in International Military Trade (CIIMT), integrating defence economics, international law, arms export control frameworks and policies, information management, organizational sciences and ethics. Although in academia, and from an interdisciplinary perspective, CIIMT constitutes a novel research domain, across private and public defence-related sectors, the subject evokes high levels of attention and interest, instigating a need for critical thinking, reflection and creativity to address ensuing multi-faceted issues and problems. From 2017, the Faculty of Military Sciences (FMS) at the Netherlands Defence Academy (NLDA) has offered an in-house MSc programme on CIIMT, which, by integrating practice-based and scientific-based knowledge, aims to contribute to this need. The NL ARMS 2021 comprises, amongst others, contributions from students and lecturers partaking in this programme.