ABSTRACT Title of dissertation: ESSAYS ON BUDGETARY INSTITUTIONS THEORY AND EVIDENCE

The dissertation offers an analysis of the role of budgetary institutions on the determination of fiscal outcomes. In the second chapter I provide a theoretical model that rationalizes differences in fiscal outcomes of two countries that are supposed to obey the same set of numerical constraints on the budget. I argue that these differences arise from heterogeneity in the degree of budgetary transparency that make these rules more or less binding. Moreover, the model is able to accommo-date not only long run results, where stronger institutions will always cause more constrained fiscal outcomes, but also short run implications, where countries with relatively stronger institutions can be paired with relatively unconstrained outcomes. The main lesson of the chapter is that, in a democratic environment, transparency of the budgetary process is the main ingredient responsible for the good behavior of the government, and that numeric constraints will have very different effects depending on the level of transparency. In the third chapter I conduct an empirical investigation across a set of coun-tries, of the effects of budgetary institutions on fiscal outcomes. I exploit a ne