The paper reviews studies analysing the relationship between infrastructures and economic performance. Four different approaches are separately considered along an ideal path from theory-based to data-oriented models: the production function approach, the cost function approach, growth-models,...

In the last decade, Italy has experienced a considerable decentralization of functions to the regions. This transformation has been especially relevant for the National Health System that has de facto assumed a federal system design. The federal reform aimed at disciplining public health...

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it presents a very concise way of measuring fiscal stance. This procedure is based on the assumption that the ‘neutral change’ in the government budget can best be simulated with a long-term approximation of the underlying trend of total output....

This paper investigates the relationship between public capital expenditure and public debt in the European Union (EU) on a panel of fifteen countries over the sample period 1980-2013. We find robust evidence of a negative cointegrating relation, according to which increases in the capital...

The causal relationship between public expenditure-economic growth has been the subject of deep concern among economists. This paper examines for the period 1967 to 2007, heterogeneous public expenditure-economic growth causality in West Africa Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) and analyzes...

Using time-series techniques and panels data, the paper analyses for the EU countries in the period 1970-2009 the existence and shape of the “BARS curve” (Barro, Armey, Rahn, and Scully), connecting the size of Government (measured by the share of public expenditure on GDP) to the rate of...

Governments in low-income countries have the difficult task of making wide-ranging decisions about public spending, taxation, and borrowing with the aim of helping their countries maintain long-term debt sustainability, achieve higher economic growth, and ultimately reduce poverty. Making such...