Fiscal transparency, political parties, and debt in OECD countries

The growth of public health expenditures in OECD countries: Do government ideology and electoral motives matter?

“…Alt and Lassen (2006) point out that the higher the transparency of the political process, the lower the probability to behave opportunistically. Finally, we conclude from these approaches that election years will affect public HCE so that the preferences of the median voter are fulfilled.…”

The Political Budget Cycle is Where You Can't See It: Transparency and Fiscal Manipulation

“…7 Define political polarization simply as the absolute difference between platforms of the parties and, to focus on a pure polarization effect, as one that leaves the median voter's assessment of party platforms unchanged. Then Alt and Lassen (2005) prove that for both parties equilibrium debt increases as the degree of political polarization increases. As polarization increases it becomes more desirable for each party to stay in office, as the utility loss from seeing the opponent in office increases.…”

“…Later work established the possibility of such cycles in a rational expectations framework. More recently still, attempts to explain the appearance of political business cycles have been based on models of imperfect information in a rational expectations framework (Lohmann, 1998;Persson andTabellini, 2000, 2003b;Shi and Svensson, 2002a;Alt and Lassen, 2005;and Brender and Drazen, 2004).…”

“…Alt and Lassen (2005) To the ten were added a measure of whether financial statements are prepared using accrual accounting. The list of eleven items is in the Appendix.…”

“…Our empirical work is based on a new replicable index of the transparency of the fiscal policy process, developed in Alt and Lassen (2005). The index aggregates responses to a detailed survey focused on formal requirements and procedures related to fiscal policy.…”