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In this paper we study the quantitative macroeconomic effects of public education spending in USA for the post-war period. Using comparable measures of human and physical capital, from Jorgenson and Fraumeni (1989, 1992a,b), we calibrate a standard dynamic general equilibrium model where human capital is the engine of long-run endogenous growth and government education spending is justified by externalities in human capital. Our base calibration, based on moderate sized human capital externalities, suggests that public spending on education is both growth and welfare promoting. However, given that public education spending crowds-out private consumption, the welfare maximising size of the government is less than the growth maximising one. Our results further suggest that welfare gains, as high as four percent of consumption, are obtainable if the composition of public spending can be altered in favour of education spending relative to the other components of total government spending.

Recursively in the literature, public spending on education is found to have an ambiguous impact on economic growth. Using World Development Indicators from the World Bank, we revisit an endogenous growth model from Blankenau et al. (2007), over the last thirty years. Considering the fiscal effect, we analyse the empirical relationship between public spending on education and economic development. Despite having a positive and significant impact on the overall group of 65 countries belonging to upper-middle and high-income countries, our main results are not robust to subgroups , focusing on the economic development. Once we control for the performance of public expenditure, to effectively generate human capital, we find a positive and significant impact from increasing expenditure on education, in what we call "performing countries". Our results demonstrate that increasing spending on education cannot be growth enhancing without considering the prism of performance.

Recursively in the literature, public spending on education is found to have an ambiguous impact on economic growth. Using World Development Indicators from the World Bank, we revisit an endogenous growth model from Blankenau et al. (2007), over the last thirty years. Considering the fiscal effect, we analyse the empirical relationship between public spending on education and economic development. Despite having a positive and significant impact on the overall group of 65 countries belonging to upper-middle and high-income countries, our main results are not robust to subgroups , focusing on the economic development. Once we control for the performance of public expenditure, to effectively generate human capital, we find a positive and significant impact from increasing expenditure on education, in what we call "performing countries". Our results demonstrate that increasing spending on education cannot be growth enhancing without considering the prism of performance.

Recursively in the literature, public spending on education is found to have an ambiguous impact on economic growth. Using World Development Indicators from the World Bank, we revisit an endogenous growth model from Blankenau et al. (2007), over the last thirty years. Considering the fiscal effect, we analyse the empirical relationship between public spending on education and economic development. Despite having a positive and significant impact on the overall group of 65 countries belonging to upper-middle and high-income countries, our main results are not robust to subgroups , focusing on the economic development. Once we control for the performance of public expenditure, to effectively generate human capital, we find a positive and significant impact from increasing expenditure on education, in what we call "performing countries". Our results demonstrate that increasing spending on education cannot be growth enhancing without considering the prism of performance.

Recursively in the literature, public spending on education is found to have an ambiguous impact on economic growth. Using World Development Indicators from the World Bank, we revisit an endogenous growth model from Blankenau et al. (2007), over the last thirty years. Considering the fiscal effect, we analyse the empirical relationship between public spending on education and economic development. Despite having a positive and significant impact on the overall group of 65 countries belonging to upper-middle and high-income countries, our main results are not robust to subgroups , focusing on the economic development. Once we control for the performance of public expenditure, to effectively generate human capital, we find a positive and significant impact from increasing expenditure on education, in what we call "performing countries". Our results demonstrate that increasing spending on education cannot be growth enhancing without considering the prism of performance.

Abstract
A heightened interest in understanding the remitting practices of immigrants and their impact on a variety of economic indicators has emerged as remittances to developing countries have risen substantially over the past decade. If remittances primarily enhance consumption, they may have no lasting impact on economic growth. However, through asset accumulation and human capital investment, remittances may serve as a vehicle for growth. In this paper, we use the 2010 Nepal Living Standards Survey III (NLSS III) to examine how remittances affect household expenditures on human capital investment. Overall, our findings suggest that at the margin, remittances do contribute to human capital investment, but this effect varies substantially by school quality within Nepal. In addition, our results indicate that internal remittances (remittances from household members migrating internally) have a greater impact on education than do external remittances. We posit that this may be due to a higher value placed on Nepali education by internal migrants as compared to the education needed for foreign job opportunities by migrants abroad.

JEL codes: J61, I25, F22, F24, H52, O15

Abstract. Bearing in mind the critical role of education in the development of human capital base of a nation, it is widely accepted that government has a major role to play in guaranteeing the provision of educational opportunities. Therefore, it is expected that adequate finance to the education sector would translate to improvement in educational outcome in the country. Motivated by this, the study reexamined the impact of government education expenditure on educational outcome in Nigeria from 1980 to 2018. The study adopted the Autoregressive Distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach in estimating the relevant relationship while the ECM captured the speed of short run adjustment to long run equilibrium. The result of the study showed a positive, but insignificant relationship between public education expenditure and educational outcome in Nigeria. Arising from the findings, the study recommends for an adequate and prudent financing to the education sector necessary to guarantee enhanced literacy rate in Nigeria.Keywords. Government education expenditure, Educational outcome.JEL. H52.

This paper studies the effect of preregistration laws on government spending in the U.S. Preregistration allows young citizens to register before being eligible to vote and has been introduced in different states in different years. Employing a difference-in-differences regression design, we first establish that preregistration shifts state-level government spending toward expenditure on higher education. The magnitude of the increase is larger when political competition is weaker and inequality is higher. Second, we document a positive effect of preregistration on state-provided student aid and its number of recipients by comparing higher education institutions within border-county pairs. Lastly, using individual-level data on voting records, we show that preregistration promotes a de facto youth enfranchisement episode. Consistent with a political economy model of distributive politics, the results collectively suggest strong political responsiveness to the needs of the newly-enfranchised constituent group.

The paper assesses the efficiency of public expenditures in decreasing the unequal distribution of education in developing countries over the period 1980–2010. For this purpose, we use partial frontier estimator to compute output and input efficiency scores. Moreover, we analyze the determinants of education output efficiency by using Exponential Fractional Regression Models (EFRM).The results show that on average, developing countries can reduce their education inequality by 30% without changing their public expenditures on education. Developing countries improved their output efficiency over the study period. However, their input efficiency has decreased relatively slightly since 2005. The results also show that logarithm of GDP and its square, urbanization, government stability and democracy are the main determinants of education output efficiency for both logit and Cloglog specifications.

The paper assesses the efficiency of public expenditures in decreasing the unequal distribution of education in developing countries over the period 1980–2010. For this purpose, we use partial frontier estimator to compute output and input efficiency scores. Moreover, we analyze the determinants of education output efficiency by using Exponential Fractional Regression Models (EFRM).The results show that on average, developing countries can reduce their education inequality by 30% without changing their public expenditures on education. Developing countries improved their output efficiency over the study period. However, their input efficiency has decreased relatively slightly since 2005. The results also show that logarithm of GDP and its square, urbanization, government stability and democracy are the main determinants of education output efficiency for both logit and Cloglog specifications.

The paper assesses the efficiency of public expenditures in decreasing the unequal distribution of education in developing countries over the period 1980–2010. For this purpose, we use partial frontier estimator to compute output and input efficiency scores. Moreover, we analyze the determinants of education output efficiency by using Exponential Fractional Regression Models (EFRM).The results show that on average, developing countries can reduce their education inequality by 30% without changing their public expenditures on education. Developing countries improved their output efficiency over the study period. However, their input efficiency has decreased relatively slightly since 2005. The results also show that logarithm of GDP and its square, urbanization, government stability and democracy are the main determinants of education output efficiency for both logit and Cloglog specifications.

Diese Studie liefert eine detaillierte Analyse der Staatsausgabenstrukturen Österreichs im europäischen Vergleich anhand der COFOG-Daten ("Classification of the Functions of Government") von Eurostat. Der Fokus der Untersuchung liegt zum einen auf einer Einordnung der Staatsausgabenstrukturen Österreichs gegenüber anderen Eurozonenländern; dabei werden strukturelle Ähnlichkeiten und Unterschiede herausgearbeitet. Zum anderen werden neben den Vorzügen auch die Grenzen der von Eurostat bereitgestellten COFOG-Daten für Ländervergleiche analysiert. Eine detaillierte Effizienz- bzw. Effektivitätsanalyse einzelner staatlicher Ausgabenbereiche würde den Untersuchungsrahmen dieser Studie sprengen. Folgestudien, die sich eingehender mit europäischen Ländervergleichen zu den Staatsausgabenstrukturen beschäftigen, müssen vor allem jene Aspekte berücksichtigen, die im Hinblick auf die Kontextualisierung der Ausgabenstrukturen relevant sind. Durch die Möglichkeit des Ländervergleichs liefern die COFOG-Daten wertvolle Anhaltspunkte hinsichtlich struktureller Unterschiede und Ähnlichkeiten von Staatsausgaben. Hinsichtlich einer sinnvollen Verwendung der Daten ist jedoch zu beachten, dass simple quantitative Benchmark-Vergleiche von Staatsausgabenstrukturen, wie sie regelmäßig in anderen Studien vorgenommen werden, potentiell irreführend sind. Aussagen nach dem Muster "Die Quote der Sozialausgaben in Relation zur Wirtschaftsleistung ist in Land A niedriger (höher) als in den Ländern B und C, deshalb ist das Sozialsystem in Land A ausgabeneffizienter (weniger ausgabeneffizient) als in den Ländern B und C" sind in der Regel wenig bis gar nicht aussagekräftig, wenn sie nicht in einen breiteren Kontext gestellt werden. Dies liegt insbesondere an drei Problemfeldern. Erstens sollten bei einem Vergleich mehrerer Länder öffentliche und private Ausgaben nach Möglichkeit zusammen betrachtet werden. Denn Unterschiede in der Systemgestaltung hinsichtlich privater und öffentlicher Ausgabenkomponenten schlagen sich auch in der Struktur der Staatsausgaben nieder. Zweitens müssen vergangene und zu erwartende gesellschaftshistorische und wirtschaftliche Entwicklungen in eine Analyse der staatlichen Ausgabenstrukturen einfließen, wenn diese kontextadäquat sein soll. Drittens bestehen zum einen bei der Zuordnung von Ausgaben auf Privat- und Staatssektor und zum anderen bei der Zuordnung staatlicher Ausgaben auf verschiedene Ausgabenbereiche im Detail Probleme. ; This study analyses Austria's government expenditure structures in a European comparison by using Eurostat's COFOG data ('Classification of the Functions of Government'). On the one hand, the analysis focuses on putting government expenditure structures into comparative perspective with other eurozone countries. On the other hand, restricting the analysis to emphasising the advantages of multi-country analysis proves insufficient, since there are important limits to using Eurostat's COFOG data for quantitative benchmark comparisons. A detailed efficiency or effectiveness analysis was beyond the scope of this study. Consecutive analyses dealing with multi-country comparisons should put special weight on those factors that are crucial for contextualising similarities and differences in government expenditure structures. By allowing for government expenditures to be compared across countries, the COFOG data provide valuable reference points regarding structural differences and similarities of government expenditures. However, if the data are to be used appropriately, one should not stop at simple quantitative benchmark comparisons as regularly undertaken in other studies. Statements such as 'The ratio of social expenditures to GDP in country A is lower (higher) than in countries B and C; hence, the social system in country A is more efficient (less efficient) than in countries B and C' are usually not very informative and potentially misleading if they are not put into proper context. Three points are especially relevant. First, public and private expenditures should be integrated into a proper analysis, because differences in the design of private and public expenditure components have a marked impact on expenditure structures. Second, both the past and projected future of relevant developments in the economy and society and their effect on expenditures should be considered if the analysis is to be context-adequate. Third, the attribution of expenditures to the private and public sector is fraught with difficulties.

Constructing measures of post-tax income inequality that are consistent with national accounts requires the allocation of the entirety of government expenditure to individuals. About half of government expenditure in the United States takes the form of in-kind collective expenditure (e.g., education, defense, infrastructure). The dominant assumption in the literature is to allocate this expenditure proportionally to post-tax cash income. We show that the gap in post-tax income shares between the Top 10% and Bottom 50% in the United States is reduced by half (from about 20 to 10 percentage points in recent years) when this assumption is replaced by a lump-sum allocation. We further provide direct evidence on how a substantial part of collective expenditure is actually distributed. When adopting the cross-sectional perspective of the Dina approach, we find that public education spending goes disproportionately to the bottom half of the income distribution. A lump-sum allocation provides a good approximation. Moving beyond the cross-section, we find that public education expenditure is positively correlated with both lifetime earnings and parents' socio-economic status.

The Peruvian economy has exhibited remarkable growth in the past 20 years. Good tax and monetary policies, along with comprehensive structural adjustment, which has attracted substantial foreign investment, are regarded as the pillars of this success. Notwithstanding the advances experienced on reducing poverty, lowering inequality and unemployment continue to be elusive targets for the Peruvian government and constitute main causes of social unrest. This paper assesses the impact of Peruvian public expenditures in education, health, and infrastructure on economic growth, poverty, and income distribution in the past 20 years using a Dynamic Computable General Equilibrium Model (DCGEM), which is an economy-wide model that describes the behavior of producers and consumers and the linkages among them.

The paper deals with the impact of the global financial crisis on public service delivery - mainly education and healthcare - in Belarus. The pre-crisis period of 2003-2008 was the most prosperous in recent history. These trends resulted in a pretty good fiscal performance. Nevertheless, the share of expenditures on education and healthcare in GDP was decreasing during the 2000s, which was a consequence of demographic trends and a number of reforms in these sectors. The global crisis hurt the Belarusian economy considerably. However, macro-indicators of the Belarusian economy looked pretty good in comparison to other countries, and the deterioration of public finance was limited. Thus, expenditures on both education and healthcare were mainly part of long-term trends and were able to avoid shock adjustments during the crisis. However, there are a number of medium and long-term threats to these public service sectors associated with the crisis agenda. This paper provides a number of policy recommendations to stave off these threats.