We introduce political economics into the soft budget constraint problem by asking if the timing of elections has the potential to harden budget constraints. Specifically, we ask under which circumstances the soft budget constraint problem is worse—with synchronized elections, i.e....

The impact of the fragmentation of executive and legislative bodies on the level and composition of government expenditure is a feature of politics that has attracted considerable attention from economists. However, previous authors have abstracted from two important concepts: ideology and...