Electoral Cycles and Public Spending during the Pandemic

• Tác giả: Aylen Rodriguez Ferrari
• Ngôn ngữ: eng
• Ký hiệu phân loại: 330 Economics
• Thông tin xuất bản: World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022
• Bộ sưu tập: Tài liệu truy cập mở
• ID: 326618
• Chủ đề: 1. DIRECT PANDEMIC ASSISTANCE; 2. ELECTION YEAR PANDEMIC SOCIAL ASSISTANCE; 3. ELECTORAL CYCLE; 4. GOVERNANCE; 5. SOCIAL PROTECTION SPENDING POLITICS

Tóm tắt

This paper uses a newly assembled data set on various types of social protection spending in 154 countries during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021 to analyze the effect of the electoral cycle on the size and composition of the social protection stimulus budget. The analysis shows that the longer is the time since the last election in a country-and thus the sooner the next election date-the larger is the share of the social protection pandemic budget allocated to social assistance and income protection and the lower is the share allocated to job retention schemes. The electoral cycle appears to have impacted the size of social assistance spending only in countries with high political competition. In this sense, countries with higher political competition experience stronger effects of political budget cycles.