The political budget cycle (PBC) literature argues that governments expand deficits in election years. However, what happens when an economic downturn is expected? Will the government allow the deficit to expand even further, or will it resort to spending cuts and tax increases? When voters expect less than full automatic stabilization, our model shows that opportunistic government behavior leads to smaller deficits, thereby responding procyclically to expected downturns. Panel data evidence for 74 democracies covering the period 2000-2016 robustly supports the theoretical procyclicality prediction. Moreover, expected downturns remain significant when other context-conditional PBC effects are included in the empirical analysis.

政治预算周期 (PBC) 文献认为，政府会在选举年扩大赤字。然而，当预计经济衰退时会发生什么？政府会允许赤字进一步扩大，还是会诉诸削减开支和增加税收？When voters expect less than full automatic stabilization, our model shows that opportunistic government behavior leads to smaller deficits, thereby responding procyclically to expected downturns. 涵盖 2000 年至 2016 年期间的 74 个民主国家的面板数据证据有力地支持了理论顺周期性预测。此外，当实证分析中包括其他背景条件下的 PBC 影响时，预期的衰退仍然显着。