The weak government argument claims that fractionalized governments (coalition or minority governments) have more difficulty increasing their tax revenues or decreasing their spending than majority governments. This implies that weaker governments are associated with higher government deficits....

Empirical research of political business cycles (PBCs) may suffer from endogeneity bias when incumbent governments have discretion to call for an early election. Using an instrumental variable (IV) routine on data from Japan and the U. K., we find strong evidence to support the notion that...

According to World Bank policy, countries remain eligible to borrow from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development until they are able to sustain long-term development without further recourse to Bank financing. Graduation from the Bank is not an automatic consequence of reaching...