Topic
Public expenditure
About: Public expenditure is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 6373 publications have been published within this topic receiving 114822 citations.
Papers published on a yearly basis
Papers
More filters
TL;DR: In this paper, the relationship between aggregate productivity and stock and flow government-spending variables is investigated and the empirical results indicate that the non-military public capital stock is dramatically more important in determining productivity than is either the flow of nonmilitary or military spending, and that military capital bears little relation to productivity.
Abstract: This paper considers the relationship between aggregate productivity and stock and flow government-spending variables. The empirical results indicate that (i) the nonmilitary public capital stock is dramatically more important in determining productivity than is either the flow of nonmilitary or military spending, (ii) military capital bears little relation to productivity, and (iii) a ‘core’ infrastructure of streets, highways, airports, mass transit, sewers, water systems, etc. has most explanatory power for productivity. The paper also suggests an important role for the net public capital stock in the ‘productivity slowdown’ of the last fifteen years.
5,163 citations
01 Jan 1990
TL;DR: The economic policies that Washington urges on the rest of the world may be summarized as prudent macroeconomic policies, outward orientation, and free-market capitalism as mentioned in this paper, which is a desirable set of economic policy reforms.
Abstract: This chapter aims to set out what would be regarded in Washington as constituting a desirable set of economic policy reforms. It identifies and discusses ten policy instruments about whose proper deployment Washington can muster a reasonable degree of consensus. The policy instruments include fiscal deficits, public expenditure priorities, tax reform, interest rates, exchange rates, trade policy, foreign direct investment, privatization, deregulation, and property rights. When a fiscal deficit needs to be cut, there are three major expenditure categories on which views are strongly held: subsidies, education and health, and public investment. There is very broad agreement in Washington that large and sustained fiscal deficits are a primary source of macroeconomic dislocation in the forms of inflation, payments deficits, and capital flight. The economic policies that Washington urges on the rest of the world may be summarized as prudent macroeconomic policies, outward orientation, and free-market capitalism.
1,914 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors derive conditions under which a change in the composition of expenditure leads to a higher steady-state growth rate of the economy and show that an increase in the share of current expenditure has positive and statistically significant growth effects.
Abstract: Noting that the literature has focused on the link between the level of public expenditure and growth, we derive conditions under which a change in the composition of expenditure leads to a higher steady-state growth rate of the economy. The conditions depend not just on the physical productivity of the different components of public expenditure but also on the initial shares. Using data from 43 developing countries over 20 years we show that an increase in the share of current expenditure has positive and statistically significant growth effects. By contrast, the relationship between the capital component of public expenditure and per-capita growth is negative. Thus, seemingly productive expenditures, when used in excess, could become unproductive. These results imply that developing-country governments have been misallocating public expenditures in favor of capital expenditures at the expense of current expenditures.
1,646 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated whether predatory behavior by corrupt politicians distorts the composition of government expenditure and found that such behavior reduces government spending on education in a cross-section of countries.
Abstract: This paper asks whether predatory behavior by corrupt politicians distorts the composition of government expenditure. Corruption is found to reduce government spending on education in a cross section of countries.
1,433 citations
TL;DR: This article found that distortionary taxation reduces growth, whilst non-distortionary taxation does not, and that productive government expenditure enhances growth, whereas non-productive expenditure does not; they also found strong support for the Barro model (1990, Government spending in a simple model of endogenous growth).
Abstract: Is the evidence consistent with the predictions of endogenous growth models that the structure of taxation and public expenditure can affect the steady-state growth rate? Much previous research needs to be re-evaluated because it ignores the biases associated with incomplete specification of the government budget constraint. We show these biases to be substantial and, correcting for them, find strong support for the Barro model (1990, Government spending in a simple model of endogenous growth. Journal of Political Economy 98 (1), s103–117, for a panel of 22 OECD countries, 1970–95. Specifically we find that (1) distortionary taxation reduces growth, whilst non-distortionary taxation does not; and (2) productive government expenditure enhances growth, whilst non-productive expenditure does not.
1,195 citations