Strategic public spending: evidence from Brazil

This paper studies how incumbents respond after being voted out of office when running for reelection in terms of public spending. We use data from Brazilian municipalities, focusing on the periodical reports of budget executions that allow us to analyze the public finances in the last two months of...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor: Silva, Felipe Yamamoto Ricardo da
Tipo de recurso: tesis de maestría
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2022
País:Brasil
Institución:Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV)
Repositorio:Repositório Institucional do FGV (FGV Repositório Digital)
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:repositorio.fgv.br:10438/32183
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/10438/32183
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Political turnover
Public spending
Electoral incentives
Reelection
Alternância política
Gastos públicos
Incentivos eleitorais
Reeleição
Economia
Despesa pública - Brasil
Finanças públicas - Brasil
Orçamento - Brasil
Políticos - Conduta
Descripción
Sumario:This paper studies how incumbents respond after being voted out of office when running for reelection in terms of public spending. We use data from Brazilian municipalities, focusing on the periodical reports of budget executions that allow us to analyze the public finances in the last two months of an election year, when the incumbent mayor knows if he will remain in office for another term. We apply a Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD) for close elections and find that incumbent mayors who lose the election tend to have higher expenses during the last two months in office than those reelected for another term. The estimated effect is particularly strong for the investment expenses.