Suchergebnisse

Este artículo analiza la relación entre la inversión extranjera directa (IED), el crecimiento económico y la desigualdad de ingresos en América Latina. Con un panel de datos para 18 economías durante el periodo 1980-2009, se estiman dos ecuaciones que recogen la relación entre la IED y el crecimiento económico y la desigualdad de ingresos, respectivamente. Los principales resultados obtenidos confirman el impacto positivo de la IED sobre el crecimiento económico, y evidencian impactos significativos no lineales sobre la desigualdad de ingresos: si bien la IED provoca un incremento en la desigualdad, a partir de determinados niveles de IED (en porcentaje del PIB) induce a una mayor equidad

Sweden is one of the countries with the largest public fiscal intervention and narrowest income inequality in the world. This article investigates to what extent these two features are interconnected and whether economic growth affects and is affected by this relationship. Empirical results from vector auto-regression models reveal the existence of important long-run non-Keynesian effects (i.e., lessening fiscal expansions and, conversely, expansionary fiscal contractions) and significant downward effects of government expenditures on income inequality. The existence of a negative trade-off between growth and inequality is an important stylized fact which deserves close attention by policy makers.

Abstract
In this article, we consider how decentralizing health spending to local governments affects health care access and quality. Based on data from forty-nine countries around the world from 1996 to 2015, we find that decentralizing health spending is inimical to timely and effective health care. We also explore the role of two specific channels through which fiscal decentralization can undermine health outcomes: externalities and foregone economies of scale. We find that decentralizing health expenditure to the local level may generate externalities to the detriment of health outcomes when it is accompanied by locally elected municipal politicians who are not subject to national parties. Our results further suggest that fiscal decentralization can improve health access and quality when approximately two-thirds or more of the people in a country live in localities with more than 300,000 inhabitants, implying that below this threshold economies of scale may be foregone.

We examine the impact of structural and cohesion funds on regional disparities within EU countries over the period 1995–2006. We find that structural funds have reduced regional disparities over this period. Our empirical estimates also suggest that the effect of structural funds on regional disparities is potentially reversed above some level of transfer intensity (approximately 1.6% of country gross domestic product). This has implications for the desirable allocation of the funds across countries especially since, in the current programming period (2007–13), all the new member states of the Union except for Cyprus and Malta have a transfer intensity which exceeds this threshold.

PurposeThis paper seeks to estimate the long‐term effects on output of different fiscal policies in Portugal.Design/methodology/approachResults are obtained from accumulated impulse response functions associated with unrestricted VAR models that include several public spending and taxation variables in addition to output.FindingsEmpirical results suggest that the effects of fiscal policies are within the Keynesian paradigm for public investment and direct taxation. In turn, non‐Keynesian effects dominate in the case of intermediate public consumption and indirect taxation where the effects are negligible.Practical implicationsCuts in public consumption and increases in indirect taxations seem to be the most desirable instruments for fiscal consolidation in Portugal. Also, deficit‐neutral policies that offset increases in public investment with increases in indirect taxes have long‐term positive effects on output. The same is true for cuts in direct taxation offset with cuts in all forms of public spending except for public investment.Originality/valueThis is one of the few papers in this literature to use disaggregated public spending and taxation data. It is also a seminal application to the Portuguese case.

In this paper we apply both cross-section and panel analysis to the relationship between fiscal and political decentralization and government quality. We find that fiscal decentralization improves government quality but not if it is accompanied by political decentralization. The negative impact of political decentralization on the relationship between fiscal decentralization and government quality persists when controlling for the degree of democratic maturity across countries.

AbstractWe revisit work that has indicated that the presence and strength of political budget cycles depend on a range of conditioning factors. We point to the importance of voter time preference and argue that, in relatively poorer countries, high discount rates will lead impatient voters to value immediate consumption due to fiscal expansions over the future benefits from fiscally responsible policies. Consistent with this assertion, our empirical evidence, based on a sample of up to 67 low‐ and high‐income countries over the period 1995 to 2016, indicates that budget cycles emerge in countries with a GDP per capita below a threshold of around 30,000 PPP‐adjusted constant 2017 U.S. dollars. This goes beyond previous explanations of budget cycles based on voters with short memories who underestimate the costs of expansionary policies, voters with little experience with democracy or voters who are poorly informed about the competence or policy preferences of political candidates.

AbstractIn this article, we empirically analyze the impact of central and subnational government spending on human development in a sample of 57 developed and developing countries over the period 2000–18. Specifically, we focus on the effects of health and education public expenditure on the Human Development Index (HDI) and its dimensions (life expectancy, education, and income). Applying data panel analysis, our empirical evidence shows the importance of central and subnational government health expenditure positively impacting on HDI and each of its components, while in the case of the education expenditure, this positive effect is only confirmed on the educational dimension of HDI. Our study shows how governments can stimulate human development, improving the well‐being of citizens, by allocating more resources to healthcare through the different administrative levels.

This article analyses the redistributive efficiency of social transfers and direct taxation in a panel of 28 developed economies during the period 1995–2010. In order to explore how redistribution is achieved through these fiscal policies, a two-stage approach is applied. First, we evaluate their redistributive efficiency – the degree of redistribution attained for a given level of transfers and taxes – using data envelopment analysis (DEA). We find lower redistributive efficiency in Southern Europe and the United States and higher efficiency levels in the Nordic and Central European countries and Australia. Second, we use panel regression analysis to identify the determinants of efficiency differences and reveal the crucial role of government quality as well as factors affecting the redistributive profile of fiscal policies.

AbstractLegislative checks give whoever wields them influence over policy making. It is argued in this article that this influence implies the ability not only to affect legislative content, but also to direct public resources toward private ends. Rational politicians should use access to checks to make themselves better off – for example, by biasing policy toward private interests or creating opportunities to draw directly from the public till. Disincentives exist only to the extent that those able to observe or block corruption do not themselves benefit from it. Political opponents thus can use checks to stymie each other, but legislative checks controlled by political allies create conditions for collusion and corruption. Testing this claim against data from a sample of 84 countries, the results presented in this article show strong support for the hypothesised relationship between institutional checks and corruption.