Measuring US Presidents’ Political Commitment for Fiscal Discipline Between 1920 and 2008

Abstract

We propose a theoretical method to catch politicians' fiscal attitude concerning deficits and debt based on the analysis of the political discourse. We describe the methodological steps used to obtain it. The methodology is applied to the case of US President during the period 1920 to 2008. The results can be exploited in order to better understand the formation and the evolution of fiscal preferences and their influence on fiscal performance. As the index is based on normative and positive attitudes about deficits, their analysis can show the presence of strategic political behavior, giving thus a way to test some theoretical models on budgetary political behavior. fpujol@unav.esWe propose a theoretical method to catch politicians' fiscal attitude concerning deficits and debt based on the analysis of the political discourse. We describe the methodological steps used to obtain it.The methodology is applied to the case of US President during the period 1920 to 2008. The results can be exploited in order to better understand the formation and the evolution of fiscal preferences and their influence on fiscal performance. As the index is based on normative and positive attitudes about deficits, their analysis can show the presence of strategic political behavior, giving thus a way to test some theoretical models on budgetary political behavior.JEL Classification: D72, H30, H6

An index of political support for decentralization: the Spanish case

“…Not even work that considers political discourses is in abundance (with the exceptions of: Bel and Costas, 2001;Bel, 2003;Steenbergen, 2003, 2005), and there is very limited contribution on studying discourses through categorization of arguments (Pujol, 1998(Pujol, , 2008and Molero, 2003).…”