Checks and Balances on Political Budget Cycles: Cross‐Country Evidence
研究发现立法制衡能抑制政治预算周期，尤其在法治良好的国家；这解释了为何发达国家与成熟民主国家的周期较弱，但若只考虑行政自由裁量权，所有民主国家都存在显著周期。
SUMMARY Previous empirical work on political budget cycles (PBCs) implicitly assumes the executive has full discretion over fiscal policy. Instead, we ask what happens when legislative checks and balances limit executive discretion. We find that legislative checks and balances moderate PBCs in countries with high compliance with the law. More effective checks and balances help to explain why cycles are weaker in developed countries and in established democracies. When the discretional component of executive power is isolated, there are significant cycles in all democracies.