The role of governance and political institutions for budget deficit for low and high income countries : a panel data analysis

Abstract

This study has a major motivation to empirically find the fundamentals of budget deficit instability for the period 1984 to 2016 using panel data set of low and high income countries. All the countries included in the study are reported in the international monetary fund (IMF) Government financial statistic (GFS) and World Bank member countries.This study has tried to empirically evaluate the economic and political sources of budget deficit volatility. This study has tried to empirically evaluate the economic and political sources of budget deficit volatility. This study first estimate the regression model by considering the panel characteristics of the data set and estimate the fixed effects and random effects models. Finally Hausman test is used to make a decision for the best fit model. According to present study institutional variables are very important determinants of budget deficit, both in the regions of low and high income countries. The outcome indicates that the budget is more stable with the higher level of political stability. The Budget deficit has more fluctuations if higher level of corruption coexists. This study contributes to the literature for institutional setup and budget deficit and reached to the conclusion that to avoid high and unstable deficit attention should be diverted to improve institutional setup of the economy.