How Do Budget Deficits And Economic Growth Affect Reelection Prospects? Evidence From A Large Panel Of Countries

摘要

It is conventional wisdom that incumbents use economic policy to help their reelection prospects, but its effectiveness is not clear a priori. Voters may interpret good macroeconomic results, for example, as indicating a highly able leader, using simple retrospective voting rules (William Nordhaus 1989) or more sophisticated inference (Kenneth Rogoff and Anne Sibert 1988; Rogoff 1990; Torsten Persson and Guido Tabellini 1990). Conversely, voters may believe that leaders matter little for certain types of economic outcomes, including sustained economic growth, so that voting might be largely unaffected by measures of good economic performance. In fact, a growth spurt in the election year itself might be especially suspicious and hence could affect voters negatively.