Empirical Studies About the Economic and Political Determinants of Budget Deficits

This paper is a survey of the literature on determinants of budget deficits. It presents some important studies, in particular the emphasize is given to the empirical results. It begins with tax smoothing model and concludes that this approach alone is not possible to explain the determinants of budget deficits. The political determinants of budget deficits are organized as: stability, disagreement between decision makers, ideological differences, fiscal restraints and budgeting procedures. The empirical results about these factors are presented. Political factors, which contains important policy implications, seem to be effective to clarify the subject.