This paper examines whether partisan politics and opportunistic government behavior generate political cycles in a small open economy, and, if so, whether such effects survive under increased economic integration. We discuss evidence drawn from Cyprus for the period 1978-2006. The empirical...

This paper investigates the presence of political budget cycles (PBCs) in the European Union using a data set encompassing all 27 current member states over the period 1997-2008, and analyzes what may explain their variability across countries and over time. Conditioning on partisan...

We investigate how the influence of the military differs across authoritarian regimes and verify whether there are actually systematic differences in military expenditures amongst different forms of dictatorships. We argue that public choices in autocracies result from a struggle for power...

Why do nations with heterogeneous economies, geographic positions and institutions agree to dispatch their troops to remote conflict areas? This paper explores the domestic and international determinants of countries' contribution to peacekeeping operations from 1999 to 2009. Individual nations...