韓國의 政治構造가 財政支出에 미치는 영향: 이론 및 실증분석

The Effect of Political Structure on the Government Expenditure in Korea

This paper considers the size and the structure of a government expenditure. The link between fiscal policy and the democratic political system has long been recognized by economists. Following the Persson and Tabellini's model, a political economy model is constructed. Data are from Korean budgets during 1962-2000. Three measures of political institutions, the president's electoral accountability (or independency from voters), the ratio of directly elected representatives from local districts in the legislation, and the president's influence over the legislation are applied. The results indicate that local districts' representatives are associated with larger government; president's electoral accountability is associated with smaller government; the president's power over the legislation is insignificant of its effect on the fiscal policy. Additionally, there is no evidence of political business cycle.