El tamaño de los gobiernos latinoamericanos según la ideología política, periodo 1990-2015

Abstract

Social public spending may be affected by political ideology due to its effect on the size and role of a government. In general, left parties are characterized by their inclination to redistributing income in favor of equality, they seem to accept inflation in contrast with unemployment. On the other hand, right parties work on policies in favor of reducing inflation, lower taxes and budget surpluses. This study's main objective is to analyze the factors that influence social spending in Latin American countries considering economic and political variables through the estimation of a Model with Panel Corrected Standard Errors (PCSE). The results of this empirical work show that a process of reducing inequality through social investment has a cost and, therefore, successfully incurring such a plan is closely related to the economic situation of the country, beyond the ideology.