Between 1990 and 1994, the average size of the public sector in the Caribbean was just 16 percent of GDP, in the five years hence, the ratio has climbed and currently stands at 22 percent of GDP. While an expansion in the size of government usually results in the greater provision of services, it can also lead to slower rates of growth because of greater bureaucracy and the crowding-out of private sector driven initiatives. Using a simple production function approach, this study provides an assessment of the growth-enhancing size of government in the Caribbean using annual observations for the period 1975 to 2002. The econometric results in the paper suggest that government services do positively influence growth, but only if the size of government is, on average, between 10 percent and 16 percent of total real value-added.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (M. Carmen Guisan).
Related research
Keywords:
Other versions of this item:
Find related papers by JEL classification: H1 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government C23 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Models with Panel Data O54 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Latin America; Caribbean
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: