This paper highlights some key policy issues regarding the performance of public expenditure and proposes an analytical framework for its assessment. The framework distinguishes three economic objectives of policies in the pursuit of better performance of public expenditure: macroeconomic...

Van den Noord and Atkinson focus their analysis on public expenditure. They review public expenditure trends and examine public expenditure policies from three points of view (macroeconomic sustainability, allocative efficiency and technical efficiency). They discuss the experiences of OECD...

With very low unemployment, a large and stable current account surplus, low government debt and a budget in surplus, the Dutch economy was assessed initially to be relatively well prepared to weather the financial and economic crisis. This view was reinforced when the Dutch economy seemed to...

The UK medium-term budgetary framework introduced in 1997 addressed a number of weaknesses of the former regime, notably a bias against capital expenditure and, more generally, poor conditions for longerterm planning adversely affecting central government spending departments, local authorities...