Most empirical evidence indicates voters penalize deficits and spending growth. Contrary to this dominant finding, a few recent studies conclude that voters reward public spending. We reconcile these conflicting findings, positing that the structure of fiscal federalism in countries like Argentina causes voters to reward fiscal expansion because they perceive that this extra spending at the margin is not financed by them, but rather by the nation at large. We provide evidence and microfoundations for the electoral connection implicit in this argument: voters reward public spending when they can pass the cost on to someone else (e.g., as in Argentina), and punish it otherwise (e.g., as in the United States).

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The objective of this paper is twofold. First, it identifies and categorizes the currency crises suffered by Argentina from 1825 to 2002. Second, it looks for regularities in the behaviour of key macroeconomic variables in the neighbourhood of crises by means of graphic analysis, non-parametric and econometric techniques. We found that expansions in public expenditures as well as increases in the debt to GDP ratio and falls in the rate of growth of bank deposits contribute to spur the probability of crisis. Unfavourable external conditions, jointly with domestic imbalances, help to explain very deep crises or crashes.

Evidence of political budget cycles from crosscountry studies has been rationalized as coming from the voters' cost to process the available information and asymmetric information. This explanation has also been adopted in most cross-province studies, leaving aside variables related to the incentive structure of fiscal federalism. This paper investigates electorally induced fiscal fluctuations in Argentina for the period 1985-2007. Provincelevel dynamic panel data reveal that vertical fiscal imbalances in subnational districts fuel fiscal expansion and changes in expenditure composition, favoring current expenditure to the detriment of investment, in election years. Vertical fiscal imbalances make electoral opportunism cheaper and more profitable.

Federal budget, Distributive politics, Emergent democracy, Congress, D72, H77,

a b s t r a c tThe objective of this paper is twofold. Firstly, we investigate what were the "recipes" of the 20 Argentine currency crises from 1865 to 2004 using regression tree analysis, which is a non-parametric data classification technique. Secondly, we evaluate the costs of Argentina's crises in terms of output losses and recovery time.We obtained three "recipes" that constitute an early warning system. The most costly and frequent mix has two "ingredients": high Public Expenditures (% of GDP) and Current Account Deficit (% of GDP). The less frequent and less costly mix consists of moderate Public Expenditures, Real Exchange Rate Overvaluation, and high International Interest Rates. Finally, the mix with intermediate costs and medium frequency is made up of five ingredients: moderate Public Expenditures, Real Exchange Rate Overvaluation, moderate International Interest Rates, strong decline in Bank Deposits, and high ratio of Monetary Aggregate M2 to International Reserves. Haciendo cocktails explosivos: recetas y costos de 20 crisis argentinas desde 1865 hasta 2004 Códigos JEL: E32 N26 Palabras clave: Crisis monetarias Análisis Árbol de clasificación Costes de Crisis Códigosr e s u m e n Este trabajo tiene un doble objetivo. Primero investiga cuales son las "recetas" de las 20 crisis Argentinas en el periodo 1865-2004 mediante Classification Tree Analysis, una técnica de clasificación de datos no paramétrica. En segundo lugar, evalúa los costos de las crisis en términos del PBI perdido y del tiempo de recuperación.Obtenemos tres "recetas" que constituyen un sistema de alerta temprana. La mezcla más costosa y frecuente tiene dos "ingredientes": elevado gasto público (% del PBI) y déficit de cuenta corriente (% del PBI). La mezcla menos frecuente y menos costosa se hace con Gasto público moderado, sobrevaluación del tipo de cambio real y elevadas tasas de interés internacional. Por último, la mezcla con costos y frecuencia intermedia tiene cinco ingredientes: Gasto público moderado, sobrevaluación del tipo de cambio real y tasas de interés internacionales moderadas, fuerte caída en los depósitos bancarios y elevado ratio del agregado monetario M2 a reservas internacionales.

Since women were given the right to vote in the first half of the 20th century, several studies verify the existence of noticeable differences in women and men voting conduct. Theories explaining such behavior rely mainly on stereotypes, differences in values as well as disparities in self perceptions of men and women This paper, using a unique and unusual gender-segregated voting booths that was in use in Argentina until 2007, suggests that labor market incentives play a key role explaining the electoral gender gap. Our estimations, which come out from a panel data of five presidential elections at district level, show that the voting gender gap reduces as women acquire the head of household status. That is, as women face analogous incentives to men, their evaluation of the incumbent performance and their policies tend to be similar to males leading to a reduction in the gender gap. JEL Classification Codes: D72; J16; P16

This paper presents evidence of the influence of political competition on the behavior of fiscal policy in Argentine provinces from 1987 to 2015. Contrary to the predominant theory and empirical evidence from subnational districts my estimations of a dynamic panel data show that political competition is associated with increases in public outlays and changes in its composition. This finding is strongly related to the large vertical fiscal imbalances that characterize the Argentine fiscal federalism. I conjecture that governors use the additional low-cost spending power given by federal transfers to feed clientelistic networks, increase public employment and direct subsidies to constituencies, thus enhancing their chances to remain in office.