Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/333561 
Year of Publication: 
2025
Series/Report no.: 
MAGKS Joint Discussion Paper Series in Economics No. 21-2025
Publisher: 
Philipps-University Marburg, School of Business and Economics, Marburg
Abstract: 
We investigate the relationship between parliamentary debates and public expenditure by mapping legislative speeches to fiscally relevant topics and examining their connection in both long-term trends and short-term adjustments. Our analysis draws on transcripts of federal legislative discussions and federal government spending data in Germany (1950-2020), classified into nine policy functions (e.g. Social Security, National Defence and Education). We apply a state-of-the-art natural language processing technique - a structural topic model - to match identified debate topics to corresponding spending functions. Using cointegration analysis and error-correction models, we find (i) significant long-term equilibria between parliamentary debates and corresponding fiscal expenditure and (ii) that in cases of short-term disequilibrium, adjustments occur through government expenditure; that is, parliamentary debates are weakly exogenous.
Subjects: 
Fiscal expenditure
parliamentary debate
Bundestag
text analysis
structural topic model
error-correction model
JEL: 
E62
C32
D78
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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