Elections, leaders, and the composition of government spending

摘要: Abstract Do elections allow voters to express their policy preferences, with change in government spending patterns following the election of a new leader? How long does it take for composition leadership? Or, do significant changes precede (rather than follow) elections, incumbents using as an electoral tool? Using dataset we created on expenditure 71 democracies over 1972–2009, examine relation between and spending. We find that leaders' replacements have no short-run effect composition, even after controlling various political economic variables. Over medium-term leadership are associated larger but only developed countries. also years established democracies, not which were found our previous work increase overall level expenditures years.