Person:

Alesina, Alberto

When a stabilization has significant distributional implications (e.g., tax increases to eliminate a large budget deficit), socioeconomic groups may attempt to shift the burden of stabilization onto other groups. The process leading to stabilization becomes a "war of attrition," each group attempting to wait the others out and stabilization occurring only when one group concedes and bears a disproportionate share of the burden. We solve for the expected time of stabilization in a model of "rational" delay and relate it to several political and economic variables. We motivate this approach and its results by comparison to historical and current episodes.

In the postwar United States the president's party has always done worse in the midterm congressional elections than in the previous congressional election. Republican administrations exhibit below-average, and Democratic administrations above-average, economic growth in the first half of each term, whereas in the latter halves the two see equal growth. Our rational expectations model is consistent with these two regularities. In presidential elections, voters choose between two polarized candidates. They then use midterm elections to counterbalance the president's policies by strengthening the opposition in Congress. Since presidents of different parties are associated with different policies, our model predicts a (spurious) correlation between the states of the economy and elections. Our predictions contrast with those of retrospective voting models, in which voters reward the incumbent if the economy is doing well before the election. Our model performs empirically at least as well as, and often better than, alternative models.

This paper considers the interaction of two parties with different objectives concerning inflation and unemployment and rational and forward-looking wage-setters. If discretionary policies are followed, an economic cycle related to the political cycle results in equilibrium. This cycle is significantly different from the traditional "political business cycle." Reputational mechanisms due to the repeated interaction of the two parties and the public or commitments to a common policy rule can improve upon the discretionary outcome by reducing or eliminating the magnitude of the economic fluctuations.

This paper tests the existence and the extent of a politically induced business cycle in the U.S. in the post—World War II period. The cycle described in this paper is different from the traditional "political business cycle" of Nordhaus. It is based on a systematic difference between the monetary policies of the two parties in a model with labor contracts. From an explicit optimization problem we derive a system of equations for output and money growth. Then we successfully test the non-linear restriction imposed by the theory on the parameters of the system of equations. We cannot reject the hypothesis that money growth has been systematically different under the two types of administration and that this difference contributes to explain output fluctuations.

This paper explains the simultaneous occurrence of large external debts, private capital outflows and low domestic capital formation. We consider a general equilibrium model in which two government types with conflicting distributional goals randomly alternate in office. Uncertainty over the fiscal policies of future governments generates capital flight and small domestic investment, and induces the government to overaccumulate external debt. The model also predicts that left-wing governments are more inclined to restrict capital outflows than right-wing governments. Finally, we examine how political uncertainty affects the risk premium and how debt repudiation may occur after a regime change.