A Baseline Model of Behavioral Political Cycles and Macroeconomic Fluctuations

Abstract

Although the rational choice approach remains the theoretical modeling paradigm in economics and political sciences, the relevance of behavioral factors such as heuristics and biases has been increasingly acknowledged in both fields over the last decades. Against this background, and in honor the lifetime work of Peter Flaschel, we set up a baseline political-macroeconomic model of the Keynes-Metzler-Goodwin (KMG) variety enhanced with endogenous political choices as in Di Guilmi and Galanis (2021). The mutual feedback between the political and the macroeconomic spheres, generated by our framework, gives rise to cyclical dynamics around moving long-term trends for certain parameter constellations. The results of both the stability analysis and the simulations illustrate the existence of multiple political equilibria in the presence of endogenous electoral presences resulting from the crucial role of income distribution not only as a determinant of aggregate investment and aggregate output, but also, of the political climate.