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Government expenditure on education, health and infrastructure: a naive look at levels, outcomes and efficiency

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  • Estache, A.
  • Gonzalez, M.
  • Trujillo, L.

Abstract

All interested parties seem to agree that it is important to be able to monitor public sector performance at the sectoral level, but most current work based on multi-country databases does not lend itself to country-specific conclusions. This is due to a large extent to major data limitations both on sectoral expenditures and on sectoral outcomes. This paper discusses the related issues and shows what we can do with the current data inspite of the drastic limitations. The main conclusions of the paper are that any efforts to assess country-specific performances in relative terms are likely to be difficult in view of the data problems. A rough sense of performance across sectors can be estimated for groups of countries, allowing some modest benchmarking exercises. These estimates show that low-income countries generally lag significantly behind higher-income countries. Efficiency has improved during the 1990s in energy and education but has not improved significantly in transport.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Department of Economics, City University London in its series Working Papers with number 07/03.

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Date of creation: 2007
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Handle: RePEc:cty:dpaper:07/03

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Postal: Department of Economics, Social Sciences Building, City University London, Whiskin Street, London, EC1R 0JD, United Kingdom,
Phone: +44 (0)20 7040 8500
Web page: http://www.city.ac.uk
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References

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  11. Axel Dreher & Jan-Egbert Sturm & Heinrich Ursprung, 2008. "The impact of globalization on the composition of government expenditures: Evidence from panel data," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 134(3), pages 263-292, March.
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  13. repec:wop:humbsf:1996-65 is not listed on IDEAS
  14. Karras, Georgios, 1996. "The Optimal Government Size: Further International Evidence on the Productivity of Government Services," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 34(2), pages 193-203, April.
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Cited by:
  1. Chiara Del Bo & Massimo Florio & Silvia Vignetti & Emanuela Sirtori, 2011. "Additionality and regional development: are EU Structural Funds complements or substitutes of national Public Finance?," Working Papers 201101, Centre for Industrial Studies (CSIL).
  2. Brownbridge, Martin & Canagarajah, Sudharshan, 2008. "Fiscal policy for growth and development in Tajikistan," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4532, The World Bank.

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