CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2025
| Author | Bazhenova, Anna |
|---|---|
| Title | Crisis Politics and Clientelism: A Panel Data Analysis of Eastern and South-Eastern European Fiscal Responses to the 2008 Crisis |
| Summary | This thesis examines how political clientelism shapes Eastern and South-Eastern European governments’ fiscal responses to the 2008 global financial crisis. I construct a panel for twelve post-communist countries covering 2006–2016, merging the Clientelism Index with public-sector wage, subsidy, and deficit, and including additional control variables. Guided by institutional and behavioral theory, I test four hypotheses: that higher clientelism increases baseline wage and subsidy shares; that clientelist regimes protect these channels during crises; that clientelism drives larger deficits under stress; and that crises amplify clientelism’s short-term spending bias. I estimate random-effects models with Driscoll–Kraay standard errors and GMM model to address dynamic endogeneity. The results show that clientelism determines the composition (not the size) of stimulus. High-clientelist states preserve or raise wage bills during the crisis, medium-clientelist regimes expand targeted transfers, and low-clientelist countries record the largest headline deficits. A composite short-termism index supports these patterns. The findings imply that enforceable wage-bill caps, regular subsidy inventories with rolling reviews, and credible external oversight are key to lasting fiscal resilience. |
| Supervisor | Kaufmann, Marc |
| Department | Economics MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2025/bazhenova_anna.pdf |
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