Recent research has demonstrated the importance of good quality of fiscal adjustments for the success of government budget consolidations. We extend this approach to analyze the importance of the economic conditions in which fiscal consolidations are started for their success. The cyclical...

This paper develops a test of the satisficing version of the political business cycle. Previous tests have focused on maximizing models of political behavior and are not sufficiently general to test for satisficing behavior. Using annual U.S. data for the period 1905 to 1984, the authors find...