This paper empirically links the efficiency and performance assessment of the general government, proxied by efficiency scores, to the trust in government. Government spending efficiency scores are first computed via data envelopment analysis (DEA). Then, relying on panel data and instrumental...

This paper studies the implications of changes in the fiscal (spending-tax) policy mix when all categories of spending and taxes are according to their functional breakdown. In so doing, we build a general equilibrium OLG model which naturally incorporates the main functional categories of...

We examine the effect of population size on government size for a panel of 130 countries for the period between 1970 and 2014. We show that previous analyses of the nexus between population size and government size are incorrectly specified and fail to consider the influence of cross-sectional...

We investigate the extent to which the intensity of political competition moderates the governance issues that arise in relation to Canada’s fiscal structure. By fiscal structure we mean three distinct but interrelated fiscal dimensions of the state: financial stability, long run size and...

This paper develops a dynamic general equilibrium model in which the public and the private sector interact in the labor market. Previous studies that analyze the labor market effects of public sector employment and wages have mostly assumed exogenous rules for public wage and public employment....

We present an analysis of the share of public ownership in the product market in the OECD countries from 1974 to 2007. Despite much has been said on the broad topic of reforms and regulation, a sector-specific insight is missing. We replicate the analysis of Galasso (2014) by sector of activity...

We use a controlled laboratory experiment with and without overlapping generations to study the emergence of public debt. Public debt is chosen by popular vote, pays for public goods, and is repaid with general taxes. With a single generation, public debt is accumulated prudently, never leading...

We focus on the link between political instability due to uncertain electoral outcomes and economic growth, through the impact on a government's decisions on how to allocate government expenditure between public consumption and investment. Using an endogenous growth model with partisan electoral...

This paper provides new empirical evidence on policy-makers' voting patterns on interest rates. Applying (pooled) Taylor-type rules and using real-time information available from published inflation reports and voting records, the paper tests for heterogeneity among committee members in three...

In this paper, we revisit the effects of government spending shocks on private consumption within an estimated New-Keynesian DSGE model of the euro area featuring non-Ricardian households. Employing Bayesian inference methods, we show that the presence of non-Ricardian households is in general...