Do imperfect fiscal policies lead to uneven year-end spending? The comparison of Ukraine & Canada

Abstract

Many organizations have budgets that expire at the end of the year and they may face incentives to rush to spend resources on projects at the year-end. We are testing this hypothesis using data from Ukraine’s and Canada’s state budgets for 2013-2017. Budget expenditures for the last quarter of the fiscal year exceed the average and for the first quarter they are lower than they should be on average.