Data for: Younger parties, bigger spenders? Party age and political budget cycles

Abstract of associated article: We identify a new explanation for political budget cycles (PBCs): politicians have stronger incentives to increase spending around elections in the presence of younger political parties. Previous research suggests that PBCs should be larger when voters are uninformed about politician characteristics and politicians are less credible. Research on political parties suggests that older parties are more likely to attenuate problems of both information and credible commitment. The effects of party age are robust to controls for numerous other political characteristics of countries. In particular, the arguments and evidence here illuminate a mechanism underlying recent robust findings that PBCs are larger in younger democracies: party age fully accounts for these effects.相关研究论文摘要：我们针对政治预算周期（Political Budget Cycles，PBCs）提出了全新的解释：当选举环境中存在年轻政党时，政客在选举前后扩大财政支出的动机更强。既往研究表明，当选民对政客特质缺乏了解、政客自身可信度不足时，政治预算周期效应会更为显著。针对政党的研究显示，老牌政党更能够缓解信息不对称与可信承诺两方面的困境。在控制了诸多其他国家政治特征变量后，政党年龄的影响依然保持稳健。尤为重要的是，本文的论证与证据阐释了近期一项稳健研究发现背后的作用机制：年轻民主国家的政治预算周期效应更强这一结论，可完全由政党年龄因素加以解释。