Alesina, Alberto; Ciminelli, Gabriele; Furceri, Davide; … - 2021
Conventional wisdom holds that voters punish governments that implement fiscal austerity. Yet, most empirical studies …, which rely on ex-post yearly austerity measures, do not find supportive evidence. This paper revisits the issue using action …-based, real-time, ex-ante measures of fiscal austerity as well as a new database of changes in vote shares of incumbent parties …