The aim of this paper is to analyze the relation between the volatility of government consumption and country size. Using a sample of 160 countries from 1960 to 2000 the main findings of our empirical analysis suggest that: 1) smaller countries have more volatile non-discretionary and...

The aim of this paper is to assess the ability of social spending to smooth output shocks and to provide stabilization. The results show that overall social spending is able to smooth about 16 percent of a shock to GDP. Among its subcategories, social spending devoted to Old Age and Unemployment...

The aim of this paper is to assess the impact of financial crises on potential output. For this purpose a univariate autoregressive growth equation is estimated on an unbalanced panel of OECD countries over the period 1960 to 2007. Our results suggest that the occurrence of a financial crisis...