The Heterogeneous Responses of Consumption between Poor and Rich to Government Spending Shocks

Government spending shocks have substantially different effects on consumers across the income distribution: consumption increases for the poor whereas it decreases for the rich in response to a rise in government expenditure. I shed light on this issue by incorporating a progressive tax scheme and productive public expenditure into a heterogeneous agent model economy with indivisible labor. The model economy is able to successfully match aggregate and disaggregate effects of government spending shocks on consumption. When the government increases its spending and accompanies it by a rise in tax progressivity, the poor are employed and increase their consumption since after‐tax wage rates increase while the rich decrease their consumption because of a fall in after‐tax wage rates.     

Who Will Pay for Long‐Term Care in the UK? Projections Linking Macro‐ and Micro‐Simulation Models

The long‐term care funding system continues to attract much debate in the UK. We produce projections of state and private long‐term care expenditure and analyse the distributional impact of state‐financed care, through innovative linking of macro‐ and micro‐simulation models. Variant assumptions about life expectancy, dependency and care costs are examined and the impact of universal state‐financed (‘free’) personal care, based on need but not ability to pay, is investigated. We find that future long‐term care expenditure is subject to considerable uncertainty and is particularly sensitive to assumed future trends in real input costs. On a central set of assumptions, free personal care would, by 2051, increase public spending on long‐term care from 1.1 per cent of GDP to 1.3 per cent, or more if it generated an increase in demand. Among the care‐home population aged 85 or over, the immediate beneficiaries of free personal care would be those with relatively high incomes.     

Long‐Term Effects of Fiscal Policy on the Size and Distribution of the Pie in the UK*

This paper provides a joint analysis of the output and distributional long‐term effects of various fiscal policies in the UK, using a vector autoregression (VAR) approach. Our findings suggest that the long‐term impact on GDP of increasing public spending and taxes is negative, and especially strong in the case of current expenditure. We also find significant distributional effects associated with fiscal policies, indicating that an increase in public spending reduces inequality while a rise in indirect taxes increases income inequality.     

Centralisation versus Decentralisation of Public Policies: Does the Heterogeneity of Individual Preferences Matter?*

This paper explores the role of the heterogeneity of fiscal preferences in the assignment of policy tasks to different levels of government (decentralisation versus centralisation). With reference to a sample of European countries, a median‐voter mechanism of collective decision is assumed to work at both a national and a supranational level. Using data from a large international survey (the International Social Survey Programme, ISSP), a series of econometric models are estimated in order to make individual attitudes representative of different categories of public expenditure and of different countries. The dominance of decentralisation over centralisation or vice versa is determined on the basis of the utility loss that each individual suffers in connection with the distance between his or her own most preferred level of public expenditure and that chosen by the national/supranational median voter. The main finding is that, differently from the predictions of Oates's decentralisation theorem, the assignment of responsibilities at the supranational level (centralisation) for a number of public expenditure programmes (healthcare, education, unemployment benefits) dominates (or is close to dominating) decentralisation, even in the absence of economies of scale and interregional spillovers. However, when the possibility of interjurisdictional mobility is explicitly considered, in line with the predictions of Tiebout's model, decentralisation dominance becomes more and more substantial and also prevails in the sectors where, under the nonmobility assumption, the assignment of responsibilities at the supranational level is efficient.     

Trends in British public investment

British public investment has declined sharply both as a share of GDP and as a share of government spending since the 1970s. Only part of this decline is explained by privatisation, which transferred some public investment to the private sector. More important was the very large and permanent reduction in public house‐building between the mid‐1970s and the early 1980s. Between the late 1980s and the early 1990s, the rate of public investment recovered somewhat, but after that time it declined again, reaching a record low in 1999. The most recent decline in public investment has affected a range of central government programmes, and it has not been significantly offset by investment under the Private Finance Initiative. The government now plans to increase investment spending, although levels look set to remain low by historical standards for some time to come.     

Macro‐Fiscal Volatility and the Composition of Public Spending*

Earlier empirical literature has examined some long‐ and medium‐term aspects of macro‐fiscal volatility while leaving its short‐term fiscal impact unexplored. To help fill that gap, we examine the impact of macro‐fiscal volatility on the composition of public spending. To that end, we analyse a panel of 10 EU countries during 1991–2007. Our results suggest that increases in the volatility of regularly‐collected and cyclical revenues such as the VAT and income taxes tend to tilt the expenditure composition in favour of public investment. In contrast, increases in the volatility of ad hoc taxes such as capital taxes tend to favour public consumption spending, albeit only a little. We interpret such volatility innovations as conveying news to the fiscal policymaker about the underlying economic conditions, with especially regularly‐collected and cyclical taxes prompting short‐term cyclical fine‐tuning.     

Social security in the UK under New Labour: what did the Third Way mean for welfare reform?

In 1997, the Labour Party was elected in the UK with few explicitly articulated ideas about social security reforms. This paper reviews the large number of subsequent reforms to social security, and argues that some consistent themes have emerged. A commitment to keep to the tight spending plans of the previous, Conservative, administration left little scope for increases in benefit spending during the first two years in office. Since that time, increases in the generosity of some social security programmes have been directed towards achieving certain goals. An emphasis on encouraging paid work has been a consistent theme, whilst aims of reducing poverty rates for children and pensioners have been emphasised since 1999. Spending to achieve these goals has often been directed through means‐tested programmes, and there has been a related weakening of the link between paid National Insurance contributions and benefit entitlements. It remains to be seen whether reforms to the process of income assessment will increase take‐up.     

Is better banking performance associated with financial inclusion and mandated CSR expenditure in a developing country?

Motivated by legislation mandating CSR expenditure to improve social equality and economic development in India, we examine the association of CSR expenditure and financial inclusion with the performance of banking firms in the period after introduction of the legislation. We study whether mandated CSR expenditure and/or financial inclusion measures are associated with better financial performance, using both accounting and stock market measures of performance, for Indian banks during 2015–2017. Our results demonstrate that level of CSR expenditure and degree of financial inclusion is not associated with banks’ financial performance when performance is measured in accounting terms. However, a significant negative association is found when performance is measured by stock market return. These results suggest that the current design of the legislation is unlikely to achieve its purpose. This is the first study to present clear evidence on the associations of mandatory CSR spending and firm‐level financial inclusion with accounting‐based and market‐based bank performance.     

论地方政府“土地财政”对居民消费的影响——基于全国地级市面板数据的估计

基于跨期消费与投资组合模型研究了"土地财政"对于居民消费的影响机理,并利用我国2004～2010年267个地级市面板数据进行实证检验。研究发现:首先,"土地财政"通过影响居民实际收入以及推高房价共同抑制了居民消费,并且随着"土地财政"依赖程度的增加,居民将相应地增大房产部分在家庭财富配置的比重;其次我国的"房地产财富效应"不显著,但是居民住房面积的增加有助于促进居民消费;最后,提高信贷利率和改善公共服务水平都将有助于提振居民消费。因此,减少地方政府对于"土地财政"依赖、建立居民合理分享土地增值收益机制以及弥补政府保障性住房的职能缺位是提振居民消费的关键。     

The Cascade of Fear: Policy Implementation and Financial Management Reform in the European Commission

The complexity of managing European Union (EU) spending programmes is the subject of much comment but relatively little academic analysis. Using a multi‐disciplinary analytical framework drawn from the management, policy and social sciences, this fieldwork‐based case study examines the reform of financial management within the European Commission. In constructing an agent focussed narrative of a specific reform episode, it contributes to a growing literature on public management reform analysed from this perspective and also to the lightly developed field of EU financial management.     

GOVERNMENT SPENDING IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: Trends, Causes, and Consequences

Throughout the twentieth century governments have been spendingever larger proportions of national income. Three issues arisein discussions about the growth of such spending as it pertainsto developing countries: How does it compare with expenditurein industrial nations? What explains the growth in spendingby developing country governments? And what are the effectson economic growth? Government expenditure as a share of GDPin low- and middle-income countries, on average, is lower thancomparable shares in industrial market economies and, with fewexceptions, is growing. Many factors, including ideology, demographics,a positive income elasticity for public goods, the rising costof public goods relative to private goods, and perhaps developmenttheory and practice, explain this growth. As for the relationshipbetween government expenditure and economic growth, the empiricalevidence does not reveal any strong correlation. The size ofgovernment may engender strong ideological debate, but the positionthat the aggregate level of government expenditure is a significantdeterminant of growth rates receives little support.      

财政竞争、地方政府政策选择与经济增长——基于中国省际面板数据的实证研究

分税制背景下财政分权体制使得地方政府之间存在着激烈的财政竞争,其典型特征表现为税负、公共投入支出和公共服务支出三种政策工具之间的策略互动,从而影响各地区的经济增长。基于1997～2009年中国省级面板数据,通过估计交互项系数的符号,结果发现:地方政府的三种政策工具是相辅相成的;交互项的作用也存在着地区的差异;税负、公共服务支出和公共投入支出对经济增长有着不同的边际影响。     

Expenditure Reform in Industrialised Countries: A Case‐Study Approach*

This study examines reforms of public expenditure in industrialised countries over the past two decades. We distinguish ambitious and timid reformers and analyse in detail reform experiences in eight case studies of ambitious reform episodes. We find that ambitious reform countries reduce spending on transfers, subsidies and public consumption. Such expenditure retrenchment is also typically part of a comprehensive reform package that includes improvements in fiscal institutions as well as structural and other macroeconomic reforms. The study finds that ambitious expenditure retrenchment and reform coincides with large improvements in fiscal and economic growth indicators.     

Fueling fiscal interactions: commodity price shocks and local government spending in Colombia

This paper explores fiscal interactions in a developing country. We analyze whether public expenditures in neighboring municipalities influence local spending decisions within a comprehensive set of expenditure categories. Our analysis is based on panel data covering the universe of Colombian municipalities from 2000 to 2010. We offer a quasi-experimental identification strategy exploiting exogenous variation in municipalities’ exposure to changes in the world market price of oil, depending on the municipalities’ endowment with oil resources and controlling for municipality fixed effects. While we find evidence of strong spatial autocorrelation of total local public spending as well as in almost all expenditure categories, the quasi-experimental approach reveals that there are no significant causal fiscal interaction effects between municipalities. This highlights the importance of using additional sources of exogenous variation for the identification of fiscal interactions. In the developing country context, our findings suggest that fiscal decentralization policies do not lead to a race to the bottom in local public expenditures.     

Poverty or preference: what do ‘consensual deprivation indicators’ really mean?

Consensual deprivation indicators assume that there is a broad consensus on what goods/services families should be able to afford, and that an inability to afford those items can measure deprivation. Using data from two British surveys in 1999, this paper makes two arguments. First, there is only limited agreement about which items families should be able to afford. Secondly, different social groups are more (or less) likely to say the absence of a ‘necessity’ is due to choice. Families who cannot afford two or more ‘necessities’ invariably have a number of ‘nonnecessities’, often many. Their patterns of preferences (and spending) are not typical and they are choosing to buy other goods – through preference rather than poverty. Simply checking whether people lack items for any reason provides results empirically as reliable, but subject to similar criticisms.     

Planning and Controlling UK Public Expenditure on a Resource Basis

The UK Government has, from 2003/04, completed the transition from planning and controlling public expenditure in cash to the full implementation of resource budgeting. Accounting had already switched to the resource basis, with effect from 2001/02. The 2002 Spending Review was the first biennial review of future spending levels and priorities to be conducted entirely on a resource basis. This article clarifies what was involved in this transition, paying attention to how it made the 2002 Spending Review different from its predecessors. Changes in both the fiscal framework and the accounting and budgeting systems have been designed to improve decision making at departmental level, and to improve information flows to Parliament and the public.     

我国省域民生财政支出均衡性研究

利用公开年鉴数据,对民生支出基尼系数进行结构分解,考察2007～2010年间我国省域民生财政支出的均衡性,以及各项民生支出对总体民生支出均衡性的影响。研究发现,几年来民生财政支出的地区均衡性有所提高,但是结构性问题值得关注。     

Tax morale and public spending inefficiency

Tax evasion is a widespread phenomenon and encouraging tax compliance is an important and debated policy issue. Many studies have shown that tax cheating has to be attributed to a considerable extent to the tax morale of taxpayers. The aim of the present paper is to shed light on the relationship between the taxpayer and the public sector; specifically, we investigate whether public spending inefficiency shapes individual tax morale. Combining data from Italian municipalities’ balance sheets with individual data from a properly designed survey on tax morale, we find that the attitude towards paying taxes is better when resources are spent more efficiently. This evidence seems not to be driven by some confounding factor at the municipality level or by spatial sorting of citizens and proves robust to accounting for alternative measures of both inefficiency and tax morale. We also find that the negative effect of inefficiency is larger if the level of public spending is lower and/or the degree of fiscal autonomy is higher.     

Did Gladstone make a difference? Rhetoric and reality in mid-Victorian finance

'Gladstonian finance' is generally taken to mean balancing the budget, limiting the level of public expenditure, and making progress in paying off the national debt. Gladstone also distinguished himself from contemporary Conservatives (and most classical economists) by having no especial dislike for direct taxes. After putting Gladstone's public utterances in the context of his rivals, classical political economy, and contemporary views of the role of the state, we use cointegration analysis to see if Gladstone, as Chancellor or Prime Minister, made a statistically detectable difference to trends in public spending, taxation, the balance of the budget or the size of the national debt. He did not.     

People's choice: Public spending,taxation and local rates

Elections may reflect ideological swings, but they do not enable voters to take account either of trade‐offs between spending programmes or of the price of extra spending in terms of higher taxes. No satisfactory way has yet been found of consulting voters on this point. Here is one suggestion.