Suchergebnisse

Purpose
This paper aims to assess the efficiency of public investment in West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) countries at both the global and sectoral level over the 2005–2015 period.


Design/methodology/approach
This paper estimates efficiency scores using stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) models. Efficiency is divided into managerial efficiency (related to inputs management) and technological efficiency (related to production technology). A Tobit model is then used to investigate the determinants of public investment efficiency.


Findings
The findings suggest that, at the global level, WAEMU countries are less efficient than sub-Saharan African and Asian reference countries. However, the breakdown of global efficiency into managerial and technological reveals that WAEMU countries are more efficient than sub-Saharan African countries in terms of technological efficiency. Moreover, these findings are robust to nonparametric estimation. The assessment of financing sources indicates that external debt has a more positive and significant effect on public investment efficiency than internal debt does.


Originality/value
This paper is unique in that it disentangles managerial efficiency from the technological efficiency of public investment in WEAMU countries and highlights how financing sources of investment affect its efficiency. In terms of policy implications, the underlying message of the results is that the rules and conditions of domestic or regional debt in the WAEMU countries must be strengthened to ensure better monitoring and then better efficiency of these resources.

This paper empirically investigates the relationship between health expenditures, health outcomes and economic growth in Africa using data from 48 African countries over the period 2000-2015 in a panel data regression framework. In line with wider literature on economic growth as well as health economics, the paper first finds that maternal, infant and child mortality rates are all negatively and significantly associated with economic growth in Africa. In addition, life expectancy at birth is positively associated with economic growth. A 9.4-year increase in life expectancy leads to 1 per cent increase in real GDP per capita. Second, the paper finds that health expenditures have direct and indirect effects on economic growth that are positive and economically meaningful. In particular, a 10 per cent increase in health expenditures leads to an increase in annual average real GDP per capita by 0.24 per cent. Third, education emerges as a strong determinant of both economic growth and health outcomes in Africa, particularly when female education is considered. The main policy implication of this paper is that governments should aim at spending more and efficiently on the overall health system to progress over health outcomes and benefit from the positive externalities leading to economic growth. In addition, it is crucial that governments partner with private sector for resource mobilization and effective service delivery.

This paper estimates the government spending multiplier for natural resource-rich low-income countries (LICs). Kraay (2014) identification strategy exploits the long lags between approval and eventual disbursement of loans to isolate a predetermined component of public spending associated with past loan approval decisions taken before the realization of contemporaneous shocks. However, he did not take into account the fact that natural resource extraction in a developing country can be linked to loan approvals and subsequent disbursements. Moreover, natural resources are an important source of public revenue for many LICs. For these reasons, we correct loans disbursement and control for natural resource rent to identify the government spending multiplier. Our estimates suggest that in the short run, the government spending multiplier is around 0.7 for natural resource-rich LICs. Government spending has a permanent impact on the real economic activity in resource-rich countries while having a transitory long-run impact in other countries.