TESTING FOR POLITICAL BUSINESS CYCLES

This paper presents a new test of political business cycle and partisan theories of politico-economic interaction. It builds on the hypothesis that model dynamics and not just the intercept of a time-series model vary over electoral periods and party regimes. Using long-run data for the United States, we find evidence that Presidential elections and the political party of incumbent Presidents influence the behavior of economic targets and instruments. However, these outcomes do not arise independently of recent economic performance. Therefore, our results support the satisficing model of Frey and Schneider and reject the traditional version of the theory. © 1990.