Il rapporto tra capitale pubblico e altre variabili macroeconomiche: analisi della letteratura[The relationship between public capital and other macroeconomic variable: a literature review]

This work critically analyses all the contributions in public investment theory. Particularly I discuss the relationship between the stock of public capital and some macroeconomic variable such as output, employment and the stock of private capital. In other words, how the cited variables have an influence on each other? And if the answer is positive, how much is it? To do this it will be necessary to survey critically the literature developed around this topic beginning from the paper of Aschauer D.A. (1988), which represents the starting point of the debate. In fact, this matter of study explodes after his works. For this reason, we try to explain the main approaches in the literature about this field of research. Then we try to analyse the general question and the most important problems about the definition of public capital and the link with some macroeconomic variables and the private factors of production. Finally, we discuss the most problematic aspects from an econometric point of view. We also synthetize the most popular studies on this topic. We discovered most of these studies found a positive relationship of public capital respect to output, employment and the stock of private capital. There is now more consensus than in the past that public capital has a positive influence on the economic system of a country. However, the impact reported by recent studies is not as big as some earlier papers suggested.