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Little is known about the extent to which public spending is targeted towards the poor in Mozambique. The objective of the present paper is to assess whether public expenditures on education and health, in particular, are successful at reaching the poorer segments of the Mozambican population. Standard non-behavioural benefit-incidence methodology is applied, combining individual client information from survey data with provincial-level data on the cost of service provision. Most of the public services we are able to measure turn are moderately progressive, although some of the instruments we could not measure are probably less equally distributed. In Mozambique it appears that regional and gender imbalances in health and education are more significant than income-based differences. Nevertheless, increased public expenditures on health and education—such as that related to the HIPC initiative—are likely to have significant poverty reducing effects.

This study examines the relationship between types of government and level of public spending. There are two competing perspectives about the consequences of coalition governments for the size of public expenditures. The most common argument is that government spending increases under coalition governments, compared with one-party governments. Another line of thought contends that coalition governments are often stalled in the status quo due to the veto power of each member. Our analysis of public spending in 33 parliamentary democracies between 1972 and 2000 confirms the latter argument that coalition governments have a status quo bias. We find, particularly, that single-party governments are apt to modify the budget according to the current fiscal condition, which enables them to increase or decrease spending more flexibly. By contrast, coalition governments find it difficult not only to decrease spending under difficult fiscal conditions but also to increase it even under a more favorable context, because each member of the coalition has a veto power.

This study examines the relationship between types of government and level of public spending. There are two competing perspectives about the consequences of coalition governments for the size of public expenditures. The most common argument is that government spending increases under coalition governments, compared with one-party governments. Another line of thought contends that coalition governments are often stalled in the status quo due to the veto power of each member. Our analysis of public spending in 33 parliamentary democracies between 1972 and 2000 confirms the latter argument that coalition governments have a status quo bias. We find, particularly, that single-party governments are apt to modify the budget according to the current fiscal condition, which enables them to increase or decrease spending more flexibly. By contrast, coalition governments find it difficult not only to decrease spending under difficult fiscal conditions but also to increase it even under a more favorable context, because each member of the coalition has a veto power.

This paper provides a model-based account of the forces shaping the dynamics of government spending in the industrialized democracies over the past few decades. The principle argument is that both short-term and long-term forces have been at work in the evolution of government spending in these countries. Emphasized here is the important role that the prevailing center of political gravity within the polity as well as the constraints that recent movements toward the integration of national capital markets into the international economic system have played in bringing about changes in government spending levels. Incorporated in the model are the hypothesized effects, in both the short and long run, of a set of cointegrated independent variables, as well as a set of other terms with impacts that are likely to be short run. The hypotheses surrounding this formulation are systematically tested and then a more encompassing model that includes the effects of domestic politics and international economic conditions is then presented and evaluated. ; Dieser Beitrag bietet anhand von Modellen einen Uberblick iiber die Krafte, die der Dynamik der offentlichen Ausgaben in den industrialisierten Demokratien in den vergangenen Jahrzehnten zugrundelagen. Die Hauptthese ist, daB sowohl langfristige wie auch kurzfristige EinfluBe die Entwicklung der Regierungsausgaben in diesen Landern bestimmt haben. Zwei Einfliisse haben cine besondcre Rollc bei der Veranderung der Struktur der offentlichen Ausgaben gespielt: die in den politischen Gemeinschaften jeweils dominierende Mitte und in jiingster Zeit der eingeschrankte Spielraum auf Grund der zunehmenden Integration der nationalen Kapitalmarkte in das international okonomische System. Das Modell umfaBt angenommene kurz- und langfristige Auswirkungen in Form eines Satzes kointegrierter unabhangiger Variablen sowie einen Satz anderer Variablen mit angenommenen kurzfristigen Auswirkungen. Die zugrundcliegenden Hypothesen werden systematisch getestet; dann wird ein umfangreicheres Modell, das die Auswirkungen von Innenpolitik und international Wirtschaflsbedingungen einbezieht, vorgestellt und ausgewertet.

This paper investigated the fiscal interactions between Italian municipalities over the period 2001–11 and found a positive horizontal interdependence in spending decisions. The results are robust to different specifications of the spatial neighbours and are confirmed by a natural experiment (an earthquake in the Abruzzo region of Italy in 2009) that creates an exogenous variation in the neighbours' spending. Furthermore, there is no evidence of yardstick competition when one considers political effects, while a negative relationship is found between spatial interaction and the size of the municipality. Thus, it can be concluded that spillover effects drive the strategic interactions in spending decisions.