This paper explores in detail the transfer and investment components of the General Budget of the Nation, whose composition is complex to evaluate due to the nature and variety of its items. For the ...study of these items, the literature on the political economy of the budget and the budget process in Colombia is considered. The transfer and investment items represent about 60 % of the General Budget and have great inflexibility of public spending, due to the diversity of appropriations with legal backing, especially in the transfer’s item. The investment is made up of a wide range of social programs, subsidies, and infrastructure projects, which in some cases correspond to commitments acquired in previous terms, through the so-called future terms. The rigidity of the budget deepens with the frequent approval of laws that generate additional spending on a temporary or permanent basis.
Globally, over the last few decades, countries have become increasingly decentralized but only recently did they recognize the need for incorporating a gender dimension into such policies. As a ...result, the relationship between fiscal decentralization, which implies delegating fiscal powers from national to subnational governments, and gender equality remains elusive. In this paper, I study the impact of expenditure decentralization on gender equality using panel data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development – OECD countries between 2006 and 2021. I find that decentralization of expenditure increases gender equality in these countries. My results also demonstrate that unionization, the extent of a country’s integration with the rest of the world, urbanization, population growth, and the state of democracy also matter for gender equality. This suggests that these factors should also accompany expenditure decentralization if the governments of these countries want to further promote gender equality through such public policies.
This paper aims to answer the following research problem: what are the models of reasonable (proper) implementation of public expenditure arising from specific constitutional rules, and what are the ...standards for such spending? The authors present a thesis that the constitutional principle of legality, as well as the principle of public finance as a good which is protected constitutionally, sets general models, which consequently determine the standards of reasonable (proper) spending of public funds in the broad sense, i.e. in the context of legality and economy (purpose, economy, effectiveness and efficiency). Notably, these models and standards meet the postulate of complete financial control, i.e. at every stage of the budget procedure (budget design, planning and execution). The article uses so-called non-reactive research methods, based on the analysis of the content and availability of source information, i.e. theoretical and legal publications as well as legal regulations (especially constitutional ones) crucial from the point of view of the selected subject.
This paper examines a causal relationship between the flattening of a government hierarchy and economic performance by exploiting a panel data set on government reorganization in China from 1995 to ...2012. Delayering has led to increases in revenue and inter-governmental transfers for county governments, but the associated enlarged span of control makes it difficult for upper-level governments to coordinate and monitor local ones. This has led to a reduction in county governments' total public expenditure and pro-growth expenditure, as well as an increase in land corruption. Overall, the flattening of the government hierarchy has a negative effect on economic performance.
Using a news-based index of policy uncertainty, we document a strong negative relationship between firm-level capital investment and the aggregate level of uncertainty associated with future policy ...and regulatory outcomes. More importantly, we find evidence that the relation between policy uncertainty and capital investment is not uniform in the cross-section, being significantly stronger for firms with a higher degree of investment irreversibility and for firms that are more dependent on government spending. Our results lend empirical support to the notion that policy uncertainty can depress corporate investment by inducing precautionary delays due to investment irreversibility.
This paper investigates the role of informality in affecting the magnitude of the public expenditure multiplier in a panel of 142 countries, using the local projections method. We find a strong ...negative relationship between the degree of informality and the size of the multiplier. This result holds irrespective of the level of economic development and institutional quality and is robust to additional country characteristics such as trade and financial openness and exchange rate regime. In a two-sector New-Keynesian model, we rationalize this result by showing that fiscal shocks raise the relative price of official goods, thereby shifting demand towards the informal sector. This reallocation effect increases with the level of informality, because a larger informal sector is associated with a stronger appreciation of relative prices in response to fiscal shocks, and thus reduces the multiplier.
This research investigated the nexus between public spending on infrastructural development and economic growth: evidence from Nigeria. As a matter of urgency, there is a need for the Nigerian ...government to invest in infrastructure for sustainable economic growth since infrastructural development touches all human fields of endeavors in one way or another. Notably, despite the country’s pole position in the economic ranking in Africa, Nigeria’s infrastructural state still falls short, which has led to negative economic growth in recent years. Therefore, it is pertinent in this study to unravel the causes and the missing gaps between increasing fiscal spending on infrastructure and slow economic growth in Nigeria. Interestingly, Autoregressive Distributed Lags and cointegration techniques were adopted to investigate whether there are long interactions between economic advancement and public funding of social amenities in the case of Nigeria. Furthermore, post-estimation tests were carried out to ascertain the validity of the models adopted in the study. The investigations from the study showed that short and long-run nexus subsists between government investment in infrastructure and economic growth in Nigeria. Hence, to address the problems underpinning this research, the study recommended that a proactive policy framework be used to promote economic growth via a redesigned fiscal framework in Nigeria. Also, protective laws and acts to safeguard the existing infrastructures should be well-pronounced and adopted by policymakers to expand the productive life span of social goods.
•Impact of local public expenditure on CO2 emissions studied.•Chinese cities were clustered into eight groups based on socio-economic conditions.•Emission differences of cities were decomposed based ...on local public expenditure.•Impact of carbon intensity of local public expenditure on emission differences of city groups was largest.•Differences were larger between clustering groups than the national average.
Differentiated policies are key to improving the CO2 emissions reduction efficiency of cities, which are vital in mitigating climate change. The K-means cluster method and spatial logarithmic Divisia index decomposition method were used on the data of 279 cities in China to examine the impacts of local public expenditure on CO2 emissions in the context of socio-economic conditions. The results show emission differences in cities with similar socio-economic conditions. The impacts of the carbon intensity of local public expenditure and other public expenditures on the emission differences of city groups, which have different socio-economic conditions, were largest, followed by the local public expenditure scale and public environmental expenditure. The impacts of the proportions of public environmental expenditure and other expenditures were limited. Insights gained can provide feasible implications for Chinese cities, and enable policymakers to focus on the impact of different fiscal policies on CO2 emissions differences between cities.
•LTC cost in Poland will rise due to population aging.•Obesity is a factor increasing the need for long term care.•We make projections of LTC costs of adults 50+ depending on the level of ...obesity.•Obesity of older adults may increase the LTC costs, even by up to 0.2% of GDP
The share of both elderly and obese people in the population of many countries, including Poland in particular, will increase. The aim of the study is to investigate the impact of obesity of adults 50+ on public expenditures on long-term care in Poland. Using the Survey on Health Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) database and the European Commission macro-simulation model, we estimate long-term projection of long-term care costs of older adults depending on the level of obesity. Our results suggest that obese people are more likely to be disabled and obesity of adults 50+ may increase the long-term care costs by up to 0.3% of GDP in 2070 horizon.
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