This paper tests the existence of political credit cycles, the positive comovement between credit and elections. While several single‐country studies point to the existence of this relationship, the link between electoral cycles and credit expansion has seen little exploration at the multicountry level. Using a comprehensive dataset covering bank and non‐bank credit in 165 countries from 1960 to 2013, we show that both government and private credit significantly increase in election years. This finding suggests the possibility that politicians use not only fiscal and monetary policy to court voters, but also implement credit policies such as interest rate subsidies and tax breaks for debt to enhance credit growth. We also find that a higher degree of financial openness weakens the frequency and magnitude of political credit cycles; yet, the conditional effect of financial openness is stronger for developing countries than developed economies.

中文翻译：

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政治信用周期

本文测试了政治信用周期，信用与选举之间的正向联动的存在。虽然一些单一国家的研究指出了这种关系的存在，但选举周期与信贷扩张之间的联系在多国水平上却鲜有探索。使用涵盖1960年至2013年165个国家/地区的银行和非银行信贷的综合数据集，我们显示，政府和私人信贷在选举年均显着增加。这一发现表明，政客不仅可能使用财政和货币政策来向选民求婚，而且还可能实施诸如利率补贴和债务减免税等信贷政策，以提高信贷增长。我们还发现，较高程度的金融开放性会削弱政治信贷周期的频率和强度。然而，