Switzerland is a highly decentralised country with large spending and revenue-raising powers devolved to cantons and municipalities. The federal system, in combination with an extensive use of direct democracy, has contributed to keep public spending at a relatively low level in international...

In most OECD countries, public spending rose steadily as a share of GDP over the past decades to the mid-1990s, but this trend has since abated. The spending pressures stemming from the continued expansion of social programmes have been partly compensated by transient or one-off factors....

Government spending on human capital continues to increase over the years. However, knowledge of the efficiency of such spending is limited. Using data from World Bank's World Development Indicator and World Governance Indicator from 2006 to 2017 and Data Envelopment Analysis and DEA...

In the wake of the food, fuel and financial shocks, a fourth wave of the global economic crisis began to sweep across developing countries in 2010: fiscal austerity. Serving as an update of earlier research by UNICEF, this working paper: (i) examines the latest IMF government spending...