This paper analyses the productivity of public expenditures. It follows the branch of literature originated by Aschauer but has also some novel features. First of all, it focuses on the effect of both public investment and public consumption (investment part of public consumption) on private...

It is argued in order to explain large differences in the level of the development and the growth of economies cannot be adequately explained only by looking the traditional inputs of labour, capital and natural resources. The hypothesis is that also the role of social capital needs to be taken...

In 1992 we published estimations about the probable effects of the EU membership on the Finnish economy. The profound economic shock of the early 1990s has made the assessment of the economic impact of Finland?s EU membership a difficult task. Nonetheless, the basic trends in relative prices,...

Social capital facilitates cooperation in the society. High level of social capital promotes economic efficiency by lowering transaction costs. Trust towards strangers and low level of corruption are examples of high level of social capital. The concept of social capital is already an old one,...

There are problems in the measures of the size of the public sector both from the perspective of welfare state policies, monetary policy and the analysis of the economic role of public sector in general. In practice there are several different measures (e.g. total tax rate, total government...