What remains of the popularity function? The case of Austria

In this paper, the effects of changes in economic conditions on the popularity of political parties in Austria are investigated. According to the traditional theory of the popularity function, economic variables such as the rate of unemployment, the rate of inflation, and the growth rate of real disposable income exert direct influence upon voters' evaluations of political parties. Estimations of such popularity functions for Austria show that some effects of this kind can be found, but they seem to be unstable over time. On the other hand, models of political popularity based on the assumption of voters' rational expectations predict that only unexpected changes in economic conditions affect political popularity. One of these models seems to have favorable predictive properties for Austria.The authors are grateful to A. Kirschhofer-Bozenhardt (IMAS Linz) for providing the Austrian popularity data and to G. Kirchgässner for valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper. Financial support from the Ludwig Boltzmann-Institut zur Analyse wirtschaftspolitischer Aktivitäten is gratefully acknowledge. Sohbet Karbuz acknowledges support from the Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna.     

Policymarkers' preferences and the optimal budget for Austria

Optimal budgetary policies for the period 1993–2000 are calculated for Austria within the framework of a problem of quantitative economic policy. An intertemporal objective function is minimized subject to the constraints of a macroeconometric model. Exogenous variables of the model are forecast by time series methods. Using the optimum control algorithm OPTCON, approximately optimal budgetary policies are determined. The sensitivity of optimal policies with respect to the weights given to control and endogenous target variables in the objective function is studied. The results of several optimum control experiments under varying assumptions about the weights show that there is some systematic dependence of optimal policies on these weights. Therefore, it is important to obtain accurate information about policymakers' preferences when determining the optimal budget.