Abstract Party ideology, elections and economic performance can have a significant impact on the overall economic performance. Governments are formed by parties that compete at elections and, based on their ideology, have different preferences regarding the size and scope of government. With respect to economic policy, left-wing parties advocate for government intervention in order to ease the effects of the business cycle whilst right-wing parties favour market solutions as a response to economic fluctuations. According to the partisan theory, left-wing parties are more willing to adopt expansionary fiscal and monetary policies when in government, as they are mainly concerned with employment. On the opposite side, right-wing parties prioritize inflation and fiscal discipline as objectives. Both left-wing and right-wing parties understand the impact that the economy has on their re-election prospects. When in government, in order to maximize their probability of being re-elected, all parties will try and make voters believe that their economic policies were successful. How the electorate will react to this behaviour depends on its ability to understand and predict the impact of current policies on future welfare. In this paper we examine the influence of government ideology and elections on the economy. Using quarterly data for government consumption, money supply, taxation and welfare expenditure, we find that both partisan and opportunistic political cycles characterize Australian politics thus confirming the insights put forward by Nordhaus, W.D. (1975. “The Political Business Cycle.” The Review of Economic Studies 42 (2): 169–190.) and Hibbs, D. (1977. “Political Parties and Macroeconomic Policy.” The American Political Science Review 7: 1467–1487).

中文翻译：

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澳大利亚选举和政党意识形态的政治经济周期

摘要党的意识形态，选举和经济绩效可能对整体经济绩效产生重大影响。政府由在选举中竞争的政党组成，根据其意识形态，对政府的规模和范围有不同的偏好。关于经济政策，左翼政党主张政府干预，以减轻商业周期的影响，而右翼政党则主张市场解决方案，以应对经济波动。根据游击党理论，左翼政党在执政时更愿意采取扩张性的财政和货币政策，因为它们主要关注就业。相反，右翼政党将通货膨胀和财政纪律作为目标。左翼和右翼政党都了解经济对其连任前景的影响。在政府任职期间，为了最大程度地提高连任的可能性，所有政党都将努力使选民相信他们的经济政策是成功的。选民如何对这种行为做出反应取决于其了解和预测当前政策对未来福利的影响的能力。在本文中，我们考察了政府意识形态和选举对经济的影响。使用政府消费，货币供应，税收和福利支出的季度数据，我们发现党派和机会主义政治周期都是澳大利亚政治的特征，从而证实了诺德豪斯（Nordhaus，WD）的见解（1975年，“政治经济周期”。经济研究42（2）：