This paper addresses the determinants of public expenditure policies, by reviewing theories and empirical investigations of what features explain the budget process and how the various attributes of actors — including politicians, bureaucrats, interest groups, and donors — and of...

This paper analyses the role of inflation in economies with endogenous growth and congestion in public services. Optimal policy rules are derived for public services and investment. The other findings are as follows. Monetary policy should maximize economic growth. The more inefficient the...

How effective was public investment in stimulating the Japanese economy during the economic stagnation of the 1990s? Using a dataset of regional public investment spending, we find that investment multipliers were higher than for public consumption, although they were relatively low and...

In 2009, Germany invested 15.4 Billion Euro in infrastructure to avert the looming recession. In this study, we evaluate whether the German stimulus program was successful in limiting the impact of the crisis on the job market. We exploit exogenous cross-sectional variation to identify the...