With new initiatives to provide low income countries with external assistance in support of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), donors and NGOs are seeking to understand whether "fiscal space" can be provided in the context of IMF-supported programs to support these initiatives. This paper...

This paper asks whether the costs of providing public services in low-income developing countries tend to rise when expenditure on these services increases - as has been found to be the case in developed countries. It offers elements of an answer to this question by reference to evidence from...

This paper takes into account recent advances in econometric techniques and examines Wagner’s Law of long-run relationship between public expenditure and GDP for the Turkish case over the period of 1965-2000. The relationship is supposed public expenditure to be an outcome, not cause, of...

In this paper I analyse the impact of public expenditure and income taxation on intergenerational inequality for seventeen countries. Age group Gini index is calculated by using data from the Luxemburg Income Study (LIS). Results are very robust in demonstrating that only income taxation is able...

Beginning from the end of the 1980s many studies analysing the relation between infrastructures endowment and economic development have been realised. A general consensus is achieved around the idea that basic infrastructure facilities are important features related to economic performance,...

This paper revisits the conundrum surrounding the measurement of the impact of public infrastructure spending in the light of the aggregation literature (Fisher, 1969; 1993). It shows why estimations of aggregate production functions (APFs) augmented with a proxy for public expenditures do not yield...

The need for long-term fiscal projections is self evident. Of these projections, pension expenditure is one of the most important since firstly it represents a large share of total expenditure, and secondly because of the positive correlation between this variable and demographic ageing. In this...

. The need for long-term fiscal projections is self evident. Of these projections, pension expenditure is one of the most important since firstly it represents a large share of total expenditure, and secondly because of the positive correlation between this variable and demographic ageing. In...

In this this paper we combine economic factors that have strong trends and political factors that are stationary in a dynamic, empirical model of the evolution of public policy over a very long period in a stable democracy. The role of variation in the intensity of political competition is the...