Buysse's paper reviews the empirical literature bearing on the relationship between the stock of human capital and economic growth and examines the contribution of government expenditure in education to long term growth in 20 OECD countries using panel data regressions. Controlling for the...

While German public finances have remained more resilient than other EU countries throughout the recent crisis, fiscal flexibility has become increasingly limited for its regional governments which deliver most public service. The recent introduction of a balanced-budget requirement (‘debt...

Blőndal examines the key institutional features in the reform of public expenditure management systems in OECD countries. He notes that the countries which are experiencing the best fiscal outcomes are generally those that have more successfully modernized their budget processes. The paper...

By analysing the evolution of public expenditure from 1990 to 2004, Cunha and Braz aim at assessing the Portuguese current fiscal position and the prospects for future developments in the absence of corrective measures and structural reforms. They argue that the current difficult budgetary...

The aim of this study is to determine the factors affecting public expenditure on education with regard to OECD countries, with particular emphasis on the relationship between institutional quality and education spending. For this purpose, a data panel model was estimated for 33 countries over a...

Based on a sample of 56 countries, we find that while fiscal policy in the G-7 countries appears to be broadly consistent with Barro's tax smoothing proposition, in developing countries government spending and taxes are highly procyclical (i.e., government spending rises and taxes fall during...

We examine the evidence on episodes of large stances in fiscal policy, both in cases of fiscal stimuli and in that of fiscal adjustments in OECD countries from 1970 to 2007. Fiscal stimuli based upon tax cuts are more likely to increase growth than those based upon spending increases. As for...

This paper investigates the impact of fiscal policy on profits using panel data for 19 high-income OECD countries during the period 1975-1999. We estimate a profit equation in which profits depend on a set of fiscal variables. Our empirical method is based on a consistent treatment of the...

Previous studies used general government data to examine whether national governments' electoral motives and ideology influenced budget composition in OECD countries. General government data includes, however, the state and local level. Using new data for general and central government over the...