This paper provides a simple general equilibrium model with productive public spending and distorting taxes. The optimal conditions for the provision of public inputs are obtained under different tax systems. Also we discuss which factors affect the marginal cost of public funds.

A new method of empirically computing the macroeconomic returns to public investment is proposed. Pereira's (2000) technique is modified, and a measure which accounts for both public and private investment costs is suggested. An empirical application to US data shows that differences between...

The observed “soft†coordination at European and national level has hindered progress in terms of raising social welfare and reducing the risk of poverty in EU. This is a source of concern given that the fruits of economic efficiency should be shared by the individuals and Member...

Merging procurement auction data with an employment dataset for highway construction firms in Texas, we provide evidence on the link between government construction spending and firm-level job creation in the highway construction industry during 1999-2006. Our results suggest that firms expand...

This article develops a theoretic analysis of the delicate relationship between wealth, economic confidence and preferences for redistribution. In our model, citizens are concerned with the risk of unemployment, but are also concerned about current income. A first result shows that this...

While a number of papers have addressed the costs and benefits of conscription, only one paper - Warner and Negrussa (2005) - considers the social welfare costs that result from efforts to illegally evade the draft. In this note, we address legal draft evasion - in particular, the use by of...

The problems of crime and the quality of justice have become central issues in public debate and important public policy concerns in a number of Caribbean countries. This problem is perhaps most acute in Jamaica which has acquired an unenviable reputation for having a high rate of violent crime....

This paper examines the cyclicality of Japanese public investment for the prefectural-level business cycles as well as for the aggregate ones. We estimate the public investment reaction function, in which regional business cycles are explicitly discriminated from national business fluctuations...

The present paper studies the provision of big and inefficient public investments in proprietary states. By means of these investments, whose rate of return is either nil or negative, an incumbent dictator can transfer resources to his/her supporters and obtain a head-start advantage in the...

This paper focuses on how education costs affect the political determination of redistribution policy via individual decision making on education. For cases of high costs, there are multiple equilibria: the poor-majority equilibrium featured by the minority of highly educated individuals and a...