鑒於我國債務問題日趨嚴重，本研究利用附有外生變數的向量回歸模型分析 1994 年之2012 年間中央政府當年度財政赤字的變化以探討政府執行赤字預算的原 因。作者收集了同樣期間的總體經濟變數與全國性選舉時間的資料，藉以驗證政府 是否利用赤字預算減緩景氣循環的波動，是否利用赤字預算刺激景氣增加勝選的機 率。本研究發現了支持政府依據凱恩斯學派利用赤字預算減緩景氣循環波動的證 據，但未有足夠證據支持「投機性政治景氣循環」的假說。

The debt problem becomes severe recently in Taiwan. This paper analyzes the central government’s financial deficit between 1994 and 2012 using the vector autoregression model with exogenous variables. We also collect the data of macroeconomic variables and national election during the same period of time to examine the two hypotheses proposed in this paper. The first hypothesis is that the government mitigates the pain caused by business cycles by adjusting fiscal deficit, and the second one is that the government tries to enhance the winning probability in elections by increasing government expenditure with fiscal deficit. This paper finds evidences supporting the first hypothesis, but not the second hypothesis.