Political Uncertainity, Public Expenditure and Growth

Abstract

We focus on the link between political instability due to uncertain electoral outcomes and economic growth, through the impact on a government's decisions on how to allocate government expenditure between public consumption and investment. Using an endogenous growth model with partisan electoral effects, we demonstrate that political uncertainty will generate a steady-state equilibrium growth rate which is inefficient and too low. We also use a newly-constructed political data set to estimate panel regressions for several OECD economies over a period 1960-95. Our empirical evidence on the effects of political variables on tax and spending decisions supports our theoretical results.

Keywords: Endogenous growth, public consumption and investment, political uncertainty, panel regressions, OECD countries

JEL Classification: O41, H50, E61