Y a-t-il des biais systematiques dans les annonces budgetaires canadiennes? (With English summary.)

Every year the Canadian government makes up a budget for the forthcoming fiscal year. During the budget process, projections are made of expenditures and receipts contingent upon predictions of key macroeconomic variables. Naturally, one expects that the budget deficit or surplus actually realized will differ from what was initially announced. Neither of the two major protagonists in the budget decision-making process, namely the Legislative and Executive Branches of government, may have an interest in using truthful projections, however. The purpose of the paper is to find empirical regularities. It is found that (1) the difference between projected and realized budgets is substantial; and (2) that the differences are systematically related to publicly available information at the time of the budget announcement. The publicly available information contains key macroeconomic variables related to the electoral and legislative process. It is shown that the biases are fairly predictable at the time budget projections are announced.