Data and Code for: Public debt and the political economy of reforms

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Pierre Boyer, Ecole polytechnique - CREST; Christoph Esslinger, VUI.agency; Brian Roberson, Purdue University

Version: View help for Version V1

Name	File Type	Size	Last Modified
data			09/02/2023 12:28:PM
output			09/02/2023 12:28:PM
scripts			09/02/2023 02:14:PM
static			09/02/2023 02:14:PM
Main Code.Rmd	text/plain	6.2 KB	09/02/2023 08:28:AM
README.pdf	application/pdf	508.7 KB	09/02/2023 08:28:AM
Supplementary Code.Rmd	text/plain	52.5 KB	09/02/2023 08:28:AM
debt_reforms.Rproj	text/plain	205 bytes	09/02/2023 08:28:AM
replicate_figures_and_tables.pdf	application/pdf	12.7 MB	09/02/2023 08:28:AM
replicate_figures_and_tables.tex	application/x-tex	29.1 KB	09/02/2023 08:28:AM

Project Citation:

Boyer, Pierre, Esslinger, Christoph, and Roberson, Brian. Data and Code for: Public debt and the political economy of reforms. Nashville, TN: American Economic Association [publisher], 2024. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2024-06-19. https://doi.org/10.3886/E193601V1

Project Description

Summary: How do electoral incentives influence the choice to experiment with a policy reform that generates uncertain future benefits? To answer this question, we examine a two-period model of redistributive politics with uncertain policy outcomes involving a mixture of private and public benefits. In equilibrium, we find that the intertemporal tradeoff between current policy costs and future benefits creates an incentive for politicians to use public debt to smooth spending across periods. The higher the share of policy benefits that are in the form of a public good, the higher the level of available debt-related spending on targeted policies that is necessary.

Funding Sources: ANR (ANR-11-IDEX-0003/Labex Ecodec/ANR-11-LABX-0047); ANR (ANR-19-CE41-0011-01); ANR (ANR-20-CE41-0013-01); Collaborative Research Center (884)

Scope of Project

Subject Terms: public debt; reforms; debt and spending limits

JEL Classification:
      C72 Noncooperative Games
      D72 Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
      D78 Positive Analysis of Policy Formulation and Implementation
      H60 National Budget, Deficit, and Debt: General

Geographic Coverage: OECD countries

Time Period(s): 1995 – 2019

Data Type(s): aggregate data; program source code

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Published Versions

V1 [2024-06-19]

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