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Persistent Ideology and the Determination of Public Policies over Time

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  • Song, Zheng

Abstract

This paper investigates how public policy responds to persistent ideological shifts in dynamic politico-economic equilibria. To this end, we develop a tractable model to analyze the dynamic interactions among public policy, individuals' intertemporal choice and the evolution of political constituency. Analytical solutions are obtained to characterize Markov perfect equilibria. Our main finding is that a right-wing ideology may increase the size of government. Data from a panel of 18 OECD countries confirm that after controlling for the partisan effect, there is a positive relationship between the right-wing political constituency and the government size. This is consistent with our theoretical prediction, but hard to explain by existing theories.

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  • Song, Zheng, 2008. "Persistent Ideology and the Determination of Public Policies over Time," MPRA Paper 10364, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:10364
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    Cited by:

    1. Zheng Song & Kjetil Storesletten & Fabrizio Zilibotti, 2012. "Rotten Parents and Disciplined Children: A Politico‐Economic Theory of Public Expenditure and Debt," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 80(6), pages 2785-2803, November.
    2. Marina Azzimonti, 2015. "The dynamics of public investment under persistent electoral advantage," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 18(3), pages 653-678, July.
    3. Ryo Arawatari & Tetsuo Ono, 2015. "A Political Economy Model of Earnings Mobility and Redistribution Policy," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 17(3), pages 346-382, June.
    4. D'Amato, Marcello & Galasso, Vincenzo, 2010. "Political intergenerational risk sharing," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(9-10), pages 628-637, October.
    5. Zheng Song & Kjetil Storesletten & Fabrizio Zilibotti, 2012. "Rotten Parents and Disciplined Children: A Politico‐Economic Theory of Public Expenditure and Debt," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 80(6), pages 2785-2803, November.
    6. Marina Azzimonti, 2010. "Political ideology as a source of business cycles," 2010 Meeting Papers 647, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    7. Marina Azzimonti-Renzo & Matthew Talbert, 2011. "Partisan cycles and the consumption volatility puzzle," Working Papers 11-21, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

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