POLITICAL BUDGET CYCLES: EVIDENCE FROM TURKEY

Abstract

The theorical literature on “Political Business Cycles” presents important insights on the extent to which politicians attempt to manipulate government monetary and fiscal policies to influence electoral outcomes, in particular, with the aim of re-election. In recent years “Political Budget Cycles” is the one of the most important topics in Political Business Cycles literature. According to Political Budget Cycles Theory, some components of the government budget are influenced by the electoral cycle and consequently an increase in government spending or decrease in taxes in an election year, leading to larger fiscal deficit. This incumbent’s fiscal manipulation is a tool that governments possess to increase their changes for re-election. In this paper we investigate the presence of Political Budget Cycles using a data set of budget balance, total expenditure and total revenue over the period 1994–2012. Our findings suggest that incumbents in Turkey use fiscal policy to increase their popularity and win elections, therefore fiscal manipulation was rewarded rather than punished by Turkish voters. The meaning of this result is that Political Budget Cycles Theory is valid for Turkey between 1994 and 2012.

Keywords

• Political bussiness cycles
• political budget cycles
• johansen cointegration method
• Turkey.