IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ris/invreg/0481.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Feeding the Leviathan: political competition and soft budget constraints. Evidence from Argentine subnational districts

Author

Listed:
  • Meloni , Osvaldo

    (Universidad Nacional de Tucumán and RedNIE. Argentina)

Abstract

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. Keywords: . JEL Classification: .

Suggested Citation

  • Meloni , Osvaldo, 2022. "Feeding the Leviathan: political competition and soft budget constraints. Evidence from Argentine subnational districts," INVESTIGACIONES REGIONALES - Journal of REGIONAL RESEARCH, Asociación Española de Ciencia Regional, issue 52, pages 119-135.
    • Handle: RePEc:ris:invreg:0481
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://investigacionesregionales.org/en/article/feeding-the-leviathan-political-competition-and-soft-budget-constraints-evidence-from-argentine-subnational-districts/
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Political competition; soft budget constraints; fiscal policy; vertical fiscal imbalance; fiscal federalism;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • P16 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Capitalist Institutions; Welfare State

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ris:invreg:0481. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: IIRR-JORR (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aecrrea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.