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Documents inFollowing a peer review process, and with previous written consent by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), a revised version of this work may also be reproduced in any academic journal, including those indexed by the American Economic Association's EconLit, provided that the IDB is credited and that the author(s) receive no income from the publication. Therefore, the restriction to receive income from such publication shall only extend to the publication's author(s). With regard to such restriction, in case of any inconsistency between the Creative Commons IGO 3.0 Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license and these statements, the latter shall prevail.Note that link provided above includes additional terms and conditions of the license.The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Inter-American Development Bank, its Board of Directors, or the countries they represent.http://www.iadb.org 2017 Abstract * This paper studies the cyclical properties of two key expenditure categories (current and public investment spending) during the different phases of the business cycle (good times and bad times). Anecdotal evidence suggests that policymakers usually cannot resist the temptation of spending more on current expenditure in good times, but only pick capital expenditures to adjust during bad times. The paper answers the following questions: do current and capital expenditures react to the business cycle? If so, by how much, and why? In a sample of more than 100 developing countries and 30 developed countries observed between 1980 and 2014, a new empirical regularity specific to developing countries is identified: upswings are associated with increases in current primary expenditures (e.g., wages, transfers) only, while public investment falls and current spending remains acyclical during downturns. Evidence is also presented that this asymmetrical response is more pronounced in countries where incumbent politicians face shorter time horizons and weak institutions. Other ty...