Public wages are a large share of the public budget in Portugal and, therefore, hiring freezes are a central feature of the efforts to control the public deficit. The system of public career advancement, however, may lead to increases in the wage bill even in the presence of hiring freezes. We...

The empirical results reported in this paper suggest that only about 20% of the aggregate effects of public investment in highways in the US are captured by the direct effects on each state output of public investment in the state itself. The remaining 80% correspond to the spillover effects...

We estimate the long-term impact of changes in social security and social protection spending on economic performance in the United states. We estimate a VAR model relating GDP, unemployment rates, saving rates and social spending. Our results suggest that social spending has significant...