【正文】 本科畢業(yè)論文（設(shè)計(jì)） 外 文 翻 譯 原文： Empirical Evidence of the Benefits of Topdown Budgeting The empirical studies of the relationship between institutions and fiscal performance provide support for the assumption that a topdown process is associated with lower deficits and debts. In his pioneering study of budget procedures of 12 EUmember countries, von Hagen(1992) tests the hypothesis that a topdown process in the preparatory phase of the budget, and a topdown decisionmaking order in parliamentary approval is more conducive to fiscal discipline than bottomup procedures. These two aspects are included in structural indices characterizing the budget process, which are found to have a significant relationship with deficit and debt levels. De Haan and Sturm (1994) extend the study to control for the position and stability of government, and confirm that certain budget institutions, including topdown budgeting, are correlated with a more robust fiscal position. Woo (2020) akes a similar approach and constructs an index that broadly corresponds to a topdown budget preparation process. When expanding von Hagen’s study to include nine East Asian countries, Woo confirms a strong relationship between these institutional arrangements and fiscal outes. Concentrating on Central and Eastern European countries, Gleich (2020) includes indices for the topdown character of both the preparation of the draft budget and the parliamentary approval process. He concludes that the positive impact of more stringent budget institutions on deficit and debt hold for these countries as well. Yl228。outinen (2020), also studying Central and Eastern European countries, includes criteria on the decision making sequence in budget preparation and the order of the approval procedure in parliament, thus confirming earlier results. Against these studies stands Perotti and Kontopoulos (2020) who construct an index of the procedural fragmentation of the budget process, broadly corresponding to a topdown and a bottomup preparation process. Although they demonstrate that a lower level of fragmentation (., a more topdown oriented process) is associated with a lower deficit, lower expenditure and lower revenue, the relationship is found to be weak. While supportive of the hypothesis that topdown budgeting is conducive to aggregate fiscal discipline, there are some limitations to these studies, however. First, the studies construct posite indices, consisting of several institutional aspects, and test their relationship with fiscal performance to arrive at these results. It is, therefore, not possible to separate out the contribution of the topdown procedure. Second, as discussed above, it is in practice a matter of interpretation of defining a budget process as being predominantly topdown or bottom up. The dividing line may be drawn differently by different studies. Third, these studies have to rely on formal institutions, while the budget process in reality may well be governed by a multitude of informal practices. Ehrhart et al. (2020) take a different approach when testing the impact that the sequence of decisions have on the oute of a budget process. In a series of controlled laboratory trials, they demonstrate that the size of the budget is indeed affected by changing from a bottomup to a topdown decisionmaking procedure, but that there is no general tendency for a top down procedure to produce a smaller budget. Strictly speaking, the objective of the budget process is to avoid excessive deficits and ensure a sustainable