Strategic Debt in Flemish municipalities

This paper discusses the literature on strategic use of debt models and empirically tests the seminal models of Persson & Svensson (1989) and Alesina & Tabellini (1990) on a dataset of Flemish municipalities. The literature on strategic use of debt originates from the question whether incumbent policy makers run higher budget deficits if they expect an electoral defeat. We introduce a vote function to estimate the probability of electoral defeat and present evidence of strategic debt in line with Persson & Svensson (1989). Moreover, we show that coalition governments in particular... Mehr ...

Verfasser: Goeminne, Stijn
Smolders, Carine
Dokumenttyp: conference
Erscheinungsdatum: 2009
Schlagwörter: Business and Economics / Flemish municipalities / Strategic debt models / Probability of electoral defeat / Vote function
Sprache: Englisch
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-27094346
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
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Link(s) : https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/888818

This paper discusses the literature on strategic use of debt models and empirically tests the seminal models of Persson & Svensson (1989) and Alesina & Tabellini (1990) on a dataset of Flemish municipalities. The literature on strategic use of debt originates from the question whether incumbent policy makers run higher budget deficits if they expect an electoral defeat. We introduce a vote function to estimate the probability of electoral defeat and present evidence of strategic debt in line with Persson & Svensson (1989). Moreover, we show that coalition governments in particular are more likely to increase debt strategically.