While existing cross-country studies on political budget cycles rely on annual data, we build a panel with quarterly and monthly data from Latin American and OECD countries over the 1980-2005 period. Disaggregated data allow to center the electoral year more precisely, and show the effects are...

From a theoretical viewpoint, political budget cycles (PBC) arise in equilibrium when rational voters are imperfectly informed about the incumbent's competency and the incumbent enjoys discretionary power over the budget. This paper focuses on the second condition, examining how executive...

What happens to job market signaling under two-dimensional asymmetric information? With 2 types of productivity and noise, the equilibrium remains separating if an extended single-crossing condition is satisfied. If not, there are partially pooling equilibria where only extreme types can be...

Conventional theory leads to expect bonds to be a financing vehicle for large firms because of economies of scale and contracting costs. We find both in our econometric evidence for firms quoted on Latin American stock exchanges, and in our survey results for Argentina, that size of assets is a...

We describe the evolution of three types of corporate securities in Argentina, namely, corporate bonds, asset-backed securities and deferred checks. Corporate bonds (obligaciones negociables) were legally authorized in 1988, and after a tax reform in 1991 they became an important financing...

This paper presents a rational political budget cycle model for the open economy, in which devaluations are delayed in the run-up to elections, in order to increase the electoral chances of the party in office. By concentrating on the closed economy, previous political cycle models had...

Political budget cycles (PBCs) result from the credibility problems that office-motivated incumbents face under asymmetric information, due to their temptation to manipulate fiscal policy to increase their electoral chances. We analyze the role of rules that limit debt, crucial for aggregate...

Conventional theory leads to expect bonds to be a financing vehicle for large firms because of economies of scale and contracting costs. In this paper we present the results for Argentina of a survey of firms and of investors on the use of corporate bonds. The result of these surveys supports...

This document describes the construction of a database of corporate bonds issued by firms in Argentina between 1989 and 2005. The database draws on two main sources, the Bolsa de Comercio de Buenos Aires and the Comisión Nacional de Valores, while some additional information comes from the...

Loan and bond finance during 1985-2005 can be divided into three sub-periods. After the 1982 debt crisis, which mainly involved domestic and foreign bank loans to both the corporate and government sectors, there was practically no credit. This situation of lack of credit persisted until the...