Photo Hugo Oriola

HUGO ORIOLA

MAÎTRE DE CONFÉRENCES

Research group

    Macroéconomie internationale, finance, matières premières et économétrie financière

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2025-15

National elections and sub-national electoral cycles: Do strong fiscal rules matter in Europe?

Antonia Lopez Villavicencio, Hugo Oriola

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Abstract
This paper investigates Political Business Cycles during national elections across European Union countries and their subnational regions from 1995 to 2022, with a focus on the role of national and supranational fiscal rules. We find robust evidence that national elections are associated with increased regional public spending and reduced income and wealth tax rates. While strong fiscal rules tend to constrain or have limited effect on spending-related PBCs, they simultaneously incentivize tax-based fiscal manipulation, indicating a shift in electoral strategies from expenditure to taxation. This pattern holds across most European countries at both national and regional levels, with variations depending on specific electoral and political systems. We also show that right-wing incumbents engage in both public spending and tax-based opportunistic PBCs, while left-wing incumbents primarily focus on tax-based manipulations. Furthermore, newly elected left-wing incumbents pursue fiscal conservatism, whereas right-wing incumbents typically maintain the fiscal status quo.
Mot(s) clé(s)
Elections; Fiscal rules; Political business cycle; National and regional politics; European Union.
2025-2

Exchange rate reaction to international organization loans and geopolitical preferences

Hugo Oriola, Jamel Saadaoui

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Abstract
This research provides novel empirical evidence about the exchange rate reaction to international organization loans and geopolitical preferences using an unbalanced panel of 153 countries observed from February 1993 to December 2019. For elected temporary members of the UN Security Council, the IMF loans cause a sizeable appreciation in the exchange rate vis-à-vis the USD of around 2 percent at the 12-month horizon, after controlling for institutional quality. ADB loans cause an appreciation of around 0.25 percent at the 4-month horizons. These effects are stronger when the geopolitical distance with China is higher, indicating a higher credibility for these loans.
Mot(s) clé(s)
Exchange rates, Geopolitical preferences, International organization loans, Institutional quality, Local projections
2025-3

How do geopolitical interests affect financial markets reaction to international institution projects?

Hugo Oriola, Jamel Saadaoui

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Abstract
This research investigates the intricate dynamics between the catalytic and inhibitory effects of projects financed by international institutions and geopolitical interests. Thanks to the construction of a monthly dataset, we first examine the impact of the approval of a project financed by one out of five international institutions on the global macroeconomic situation on non-permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). In particular, we study the potential catalytic effect or inhibitory effect of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the European Investment Bank, and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. We underline the existence of a catalytic effect and an inhibitory effect in non-permanent members of the UNSC that can significantly impact national macroeconomic situations in a positive or negative way. Second, we contribute to the literature by emphasizing the importance of the country's geopolitical preferences in the existence and nature of the catalytic effect. We measure these geopolitical preferences through the distance between one country's ideal point in the United Nations General Assembly and the ideal points of UNSC permanent members session after session.
Mot(s) clé(s)
International institutions, United Nations, Geopolitical preferences, Catalytic effect, Inhibitory effect
2023-30

Opportunistic Political Central Bank Coverage: Does media coverage of ECB's Monetary Policy Impacts German Political Parties' Popularity?

Hugo Oriola, Matthieu Picault

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Abstract
We define the concept of Opportunistic Political Central Bank Coverage (OPCBC) which corresponds to an opportunistic modification of parties’ popularity induced by media coverage of monetary policy. More precisely, we suppose that the treatment of monetary policy in the press has a significant impact on the popularity of national political parties prior to an election. To investigate on the existence of this concept, we collect monthly popularity ratings for 6 German political forces on the period between January 2005 and December 2021. Then, we measure media coverage through a textual analysis on more than 26.000 press articles from 6 different German newspapers. Finally, we estimate popularity functions for these German political parties in which we introduce our textual measures interacted with a dummy taking the value 1 in the month prior to an election. Our analysis underlines the existence of OPCBCs in Germany in the month preceding federal elections and elections to the European Parliament. This result is robust to the use of a SUR model, alternative pre-electoral periods, the implementation of two different tone analysis, the use of Google Trends data and the interest of the public for members of the ECB. Finally, it seems that the existence of OPCBCs depend on the partisanship of the media studied.
Mot(s) clé(s)
European Central Bank; Press; Textual Analysis; Tone Analysis; Elections; Political Cycles; Germany
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