Endogenous Growth,Taxes and Government Spending: Theory and Evidence*

This paper provides a theoretical and empirical investigation of the simultaneous effects of taxes and government spending on long‐run economic growth in an endogenous growth framework. A two‐sector model is considered: one sector produces physical output and the other produces human capital. Government expenditure is divided into several categories, and several types of taxes are included. The property tax is especially interesting because it is a major source of revenue for local government. The theoretical model is estimated using annual panel data from North Carolina counties. This study finds that state‐level fiscal policies affect economic growth but county‐level fiscal policies do not.     

Corruption and growth in Africa

A major concern in the development of African economies is the impact of corruption on economic growth and while there is general agreement on its detrimental effects, there is considerable debate over its nature and importance. In particular there is little work on the interaction between corruption, government expenditures and how this influences economic growth in countries in the region. This paper takes an endogenous growth model, extends it to include different categories of government spending and then introduces the possibility of corruption, which is allowed to have different effects on each of the categories. The results confirm the negative effect of corruption and military spending, but also show that corruption interacts with military burden, through indirect and complementary effects, to further increase its negative effect. The policy implications are that the effects of corruption on economic growth are worse than was thought in countries which have high military burdens.     

地方政府财政支出结构影响农村居民消费的实证研究

地方政府财政支出可划分为投资性支出、消费性支出和福利性支出.通过构建适合我国农村居民消费特征的理论模型,运用1995-2009年省际面板数据,实证检验地方政府财政支出对农村居民消费的影响.结果显示:政府投资性支出和福利性支出对农村居民消费具有正向促进作用,政府消费性支出对农村居民消费则具有负向抑制作用.因此,政府应该进一步优化财政支出结构来促进农村居民消费的增长.     

Asymmetric output growth effects of government spending: Cross-sectional and panel data evidence

Using a model that accommodates asymmetric adjustments of output growth to changes in growth of government spending, the effects of aggregate and disaggregate government spending variables on output growth are examined. Both cross-section and panel regression estimations are conducted. Robustness of results to joint-endogeneity of output and government spending, alternative conditioning variables, and cointegration is investigated. Aggregate government spending appears to have positive output growth effects particularly in periods of below-trend growth in this variable. The government sector's productivity appears to be higher than non-government sector's productivity when spending growth is below-trend growth and only for non-OECD countries; no differences in sectoral productivities are detected for OECD countries. Government consumption spending has no significant output growth effects, but government investment spending has positive output growth effects particularly when its growth falls below its trend-growth; this favorable effect turns negative when government investment spending growth exceeds its trend-growth. Results are robust across alternative model specifications and estimation methods.     

Who benefits from big government? A life satisfaction approach

Which impact does government size have on life satisfaction, and how do effects of bigger government differ between income groups in society? Previous studies typically employed country averages and thus neglected possibly heterogeneous happiness effects between income groups. This paper addresses empirically the effects of government spending on subjective well-being of individuals belonging to different income groups. Our analysis is based on individual data from 25 European countries participating in the European Social Survey. In contrast to most previous studies we take account of the endogeneity between relative income position and reported life satisfaction by an instrumental variable approach. Our results suggest, first, that most government spending categories, including social protection, are on average negatively related to individual well-being. Secondly, estimated marginal effects of health, education and social protection spending at different income levels show that spending increases always have a stronger negative effect on high income groups’ well-being than on low income groups’ life satisfaction. For all government spending categories, marginal happiness effects of higher public spending are clearly negative for income groups at the top.     

Measuring the Human Capital Intensity of Government Spending and its Impact on Economic Growth in a Cross Section of Countries

This paper contradicts previous findings of a lack of relationship between government spending and long run economic growth. The paper argues that government spending has several opposing effects on growth. I focus on one of these, 'relative wage effects,' involving the human capital intensity of government spending. The paper constructs two rough measures of this variable for a diverse cross-section of countries, and uses them to disentangle relative wage effects from other effects of government spending. The paper finds that, after netting out relative wage effects, government spending is positively correlated with growth across countries. Furthermore, as the theory predicts, relative wage effects appear to be empirically important in countries where (a) government spending comprises a sufficiently large share of aggregate spending, and (b) government spending is particularly human capital-intensive.     

分税制改革与中国地方政府的基础设施投资偏好*——基于财政激励假说的实证分析

已有文献认为,晋升政治激励是解释中国地方政府基础设施投资偏好的主要原因。但统计数据却表明,1995年以前基础设施资本存量增长速度与GDP增长速度是重合的,1995年以后基础设施资本存量的增长速度明显超过了GDP增长速度。由于改革以来晋升政治激励并未发生变化,因此已有文献无法解释1995年前后两个时期里为何出现基础设施增长模式的差异。本文提出的财政激励假说认为,分税制改革所带来的财政激励变化,是导致地方政府投资在1995年以后变得偏好于基础设施的主要原因。笔者利用省级面板数据对上述假说进行了检验,发现财政激励假说可以很好地解释分税制改革前后地方政府基础设施投资偏好的变化。这意味着进一步完善分税制对改进地方政府的支出偏好是至关重要的。     

SOCIAL STATUS,EDUCATION AND GOVERNMENT SPENDING IN A TWO‐SECTOR MODEL OF ENDOGENOUS GROWTH*

This paper extends the relative wealth specification of status preference to the two‐sector Uzawa (1965 )– Lucas (1988 ) model and examines the effectiveness of government spending on economic growth. It is found that the desire for relative wealth‐induced social status and/or the education component of relative wealth‐induced social status are important ingredients in determining the growth rate effects of government spending. Provided that the agent is concerned with his or her relative social position, the education‐induced social status plays a more important role than the physical‐asset‐induced social status in determining the validity of public spending on growth. If individuals do not care about their education‐driven social rewards, then an increase in government spending has no effect on the balanced growth rate regardless of the presence of the physical‐asset‐induced social status. A rise in government spending reduces the long‐run growth rate if the education‐induced social status is present.     

Government Spending, Taxation, and Oil Revenues in Mexico

The paper analyzes the intertemporal relationship between oil duties, taxes, government spending, and GDP in Mexico during the 1981–98 period. The results from estimating a VAR model, impulse response functions, and variance decompositions on the quarterly series of taxes, government spending, oil duties, and GDP suggest that there seems to be a substitution effect between oil duties and tax revenues, and that tax revenues are not able to absorb temporary decreases in oil duties. Also, increases in tax revenue might lead to increasing government spending, but short–run increases in government spending are not likely to lead to political pressure to reduce the expected budget deficit via increased taxation and/or oil revenues. Lastly, GDP is not stimulated in the short–run by temporary increases in government spending and, thus, stabilization measures adopted in recent years to reduce the size of the government are not likely to significantly undermine GDP growth.     

Procyclical government spending: Patterns of pressure and prudence in the OECD

This paper tests for differences in the cyclicality of government spending across functional categories. Evidence from 20 OECD countries suggests that procyclicality is more likely in smaller functional budgets, but capital spending is more likely to be procyclical for the larger spending categories.     

Consumption multipliers of different types of public spending: a structural vector error correction analysis for the UK

The aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship between government spending and private consumption in the UK, for which there is scarce previous empirical evidence. We disaggregate public expenditure into three categories and search for the corresponding private consumption multipliers. Our analysis is based on the estimation of a structural vector error correction model with quarterly non-interpolated data for the period 1981:1–2007:4. Initially, we estimate negative but barely significant effects on consumption of shocks to total public spending. Then, using the public spending breaking down, we find that while shocks to public wages crowd-out private consumption as predicted by neoclassical models, shocks to the non-systematic component of social spending and government purchases of goods and services generate a positive reaction, so to crowd-in private consumption. Thus, the qualitative and quantitative dimensions of fiscal multipliers on private consumption change across different public spending categories. Our findings suggest that any empirical support of competing theoretical models on the issue would benefit from a disaggregation of government expenditure, rather than focusing on the aggregate measure.     

Identifying fiscal policy (in)effectiveness from the differential counter‐cyclicality of government spending in the interwar period

Differences across decades in the counter‐cyclical stance of fiscal policy can identify whether the growth in government spending affects output growth and so speeds recovery from a recession. We study government‐spending reaction functions from the 1920s and 1930s for twenty countries. There are two main findings. First, surprisingly, government spending was less counter‐cyclical in the 1930s than in the 1920s. Second, the growth of government spending did not have a significant effect on output growth, so that there is little evidence that this feature of fiscal policy played a stabilizing role in the interwar period.     

Political incentives and local government spending multiplier: Evidence for Chinese provinces (1978–2016)

This paper uses data from Chinese provinces to examine the effects of political incentives of provincial leaders on local government spending multipliers over the post-economic-reform period. The estimation based on the local projection method provides three novel findings. Firstly, the estimated cumulative relative government spending multiplier is well above unity, and it is greater in the period after 1994 compared with before 1994. Secondly, the political incentives of provincial leaders augment the local government spending multipliers, and the effects are highly significant after 1994. Thirdly, the economic boom strengthens the augmenting effects of political incentives after 1994.     

Growth effects of public expenditure on the state and local level: evidence from a sample of rich governments

There is a vast empirical literature investigating the relationship between government size and economic growth. But the empirical evidence of growth effects of public expenditure using cross-country regressions is still inconclusive. According to a number of authors this is not surprising since the negative relationship only applies for rich countries with a large public sector. Restricting their analysis on rich countries only they can show the predicted negative impact. Naturally, a selection of a sub-sample of rich countries is always somewhat arbitrary. Another possibility is to concentrate on governments within a rich country. However, only few studies investigate the effect of state and local spending on economic growth. This study concentrates on the relationship between public expenditure and economic growth within a rich country using the full sample of state and local governments from Switzerland over the 1981–2001 period. The general finding is a fairly robust negative relationship between government size and economic growth. However, in contrast to public spending from operating budgets there is no significant impact on economic growth by expenditure from capital budgets.     

THE TWO‐WAY RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN GOVERNMENT SPENDING AND CORRUPTION AND ITS EFFECTS ON ECONOMIC GROWTH

The existing empirical evidence suggests that in low‐income economies, an increase in government spending leads to a reduction of growth. This article aims to explain this empirical fact by considering a growth model that incorporates a two‐way relationship between corruption and government spending. That is, government spending gives rise to corruption and rent seeking, which feeds back by distorting the structure and size of government spending. In addition, the cost of corruption depends on the wage rate. Therefore, in low‐income economies, increases in government spending tend to generate larger social losses caused by a higher level of rent dissipation and a concomitant rise in corruption and government inefficiency. Consequently, in such economies, an increase in government spending is more likely to result in a decline of economic growth. (JEL H3, O11, O41)     

内生增长、政府生产性支出与中国居民消费

中国财政支出的较大一部分用于生产建设,中国居民消费与政府生产性支出表现出稳健的正相关关系,这一事实与从标准的新古典和新凯恩斯模型得出的挤出效应截然不同。本文构建了包含存量和流量两部分政府生产性支出的内生增长模型,研究表明,政府支出增加在提高税负、挤出居民消费的同时,也通过其生产性增加收入、挤入居民消费;政府支出增加究竟挤入还是挤出居民消费取决于两种效应的比较以及政府的生产性支出比重和税负水平。政府生产性支出的最优结构等于其相对生产性之比,政府支出的最优规模等于政府支出的生产性。     

Highway Spending and Induced Vehicle Emissions: Evidence from the US states

This paper investigates the impact of state and local government highway spending on vehicle emissions. A theoretical framework is constructed to show the effect of government highway spending on passenger and freight vehicle emissions and decompose the effect into a rebound effect, an induced demand effect and an interaction effect. We then develop an empirical strategy and combine state-level data in the US to test the induced CO2 emissions by government highway spending. We find that there are positive and significant total effects of government highway spending on passenger and freight vehicle emissions. The magnitude of these effects, however, significantly differs from one another as the elasticity of freight vehicle emissions with respect to government highway spending is four times larger than that in the passenger sector. The difference can be plausibly explained by the rebound effect and the interaction effect. We argue that policies regarding government spending on highway projects, especially those relying on cost-benefit analysis, should account for the potential difference in induced environmental impacts between passenger and freight vehicles.     

School Finance Litigation, Tax and Expenditure Limitations, and Education Spending

Since the early 1970s, litigation in many U.S. states has led to education finance reform. Over the same period, many states have imposed new tax and expenditure limitations (TELs) on local governments. The imposition of a TEL may alter how local and state education expenditures change subsequent to court-mandated decreases in spending inequality. Similarly, the effectiveness of TELs in limiting local education expenditures may be influenced by reform. To better evaluate the effects of reform and TELs on education spending, this article considers them jointly and finds that reform has a negative effect on local own-source education expenditures only in the presence of TELs. In the absence of court-ordered reform, TELs decrease own-source expenditure, but the effect is less pronounced than when TELs are present with reform. When both are present, state government spending on education is higher. Also TELs and court-ordered reform independently increase state government spending on education. (JEL H72 , I22 )     

财政分权与经济增长

对H.Davoodi,D.Xie,and H.Zou的两篇文章中的内生增长模型进行了改进;把地方财政决算支出占国家决算支出的比重看作衡量财政分权的指标,并利用1986-2004年间的数据对财政分权对我国经济增长的作用进行了两组回归分析。发现在1986-1990年间我国的财政分权的比重过高阻碍了我国的经济增长;在1991-2004年间我国的财政分权程度与我国的最大化经济增长相符。最后,对得出的统计结论进行了充分的解释。     

THE PRIVATE SECTOR IMPACT OF STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT: HAS MORE BECOME BAD?

Early research suggests some increases in state and local government spending more than offset the negative effects of the tax increases needed to fund them. More recent research finds the growth of state and local government generally discourages private sector growth. Using panel data on private employment, capital and output for the 48 contiguous states, the authors find that government size influences whether additional government helps or hinders private sector growth. The rapid growth of state and local government in the late 1980s likely outstripped the willingness to pay. With government growth moderating in the 1990s, however, the private sector response has become more favorable. (JEL H3 , H4 , R5 )