Poland's Experience in Light of Political Business Cycle Theory

Abstract

The objective of the paper is an attempted identification of the symptoms of a likelihood of any threat caused by political business cycle in Poland. The author refers to empirical research indicating the circumstances of politically driven economic fluctuations in various parts of the world. Given Poland's experience within 1989- 2010 the author tries to identify such a combination of GDP, inflation, unemployment and election results of political parties that could prove the threat of political cycle. Of special focus to the author is an attempt to verify the opportunistic theories of the cycle, basing on regional unemployment statistics and elections results of ruling political parties. Within the conducted analysis there is no time period found out within which all microeconomic variables as well as elections results would be unanimously derived from theoretical basis. The analysis gives no grounds to formulate a thesis that in Poland within the researched time span there was a political business cycle. However, the author identifies all the factors that might indicate such a threat. (original abstract)