Magnificent political budget cycle? How elections of higher education institutions’ authorities in Poland shaped their expenditures in 1999–2024
研究了波兰公立高校在校长等领导民主选举且拥有预算自主权时，选举前会显著增加支出（约4%），选举后减少（约2%），表明存在政治预算周期，对研究高校治理和财政行为的人有参考价值。
This paper argues that the theory of political budget cycles can also be applied to the analysis of expenditure changes in state Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). The hypothesis is tested that when rectors and other HEI authorities are democratically elected and have the autonomy to make discretionary budgetary decisions, they increase HEI spending before the election to increase their re-election chances. The results presented here are based on a novel dataset on Top50 Polish HEIs’ spending from 1999-2024. They show that in the pre-election year their spending is significantly larger (by approx. 4%) and after the election it is significantly lower (by approx. 2%), which strongly suggests the presence of a political budget cycle at Polish HEIs. More detailed analyses show that the magnitude of the cycle is higher at technical and classical universities, and lower at economic and medical universities. The magnitude of the cycle, in turn, is not dependent on whether the rector is eligible to be re-elected or term-limited.