This paper focuses on the trade-off faced by governments in deciding the allocation of public expenditures between productivity-enhancing public infrastructures and utility-enhancing public consumption. From the modeling point of view, the paper augments a standard New Open Economy...

This paper helps resolve a paradox in the literature, noticed by Alesina and Perotti (1995), which is that, although government employment is an important component of public spending, the debate on the effects of fiscal policy focuses almost exclusively on shocks to non-wage government...

This paper studies, in the context of a New Open Economy Macroeconomics (NOEM) model, the effects of ""public competition policies"" aimed at improving the efficiency of public spending. Such measures are modeled as an increase in the price elasticity of public consumption. The paper finds that...