Political cycles in public expenditure: butter vs guns
从理论和实证上研究政府如何利用社会支出与军事支出之间的权衡来推进选举和党派目标，发现选举年政府倾向于增加社会支出、减少军事支出，且左右翼政府在不同支出类别上有差异。
This paper explores, theoretically and empirically, how governments may use the tradeoff between social and military expenditure to advance their electoral and partisan objectives. Three key results emerge. First, governments tend to bias outlays towards social expenditure and away from military expenditure at election times. Second, the size of this tradeoff is larger when we exclude countries involved in conflict, where national security plays an important role on voter choice. Third, while certain categories of social expenditure are higher during left administrations, military expenditure is higher during right administrations.