Aggregate Government Spending Research Articles

Can aging population affect economic growth through the channel of government spending?

The demographic transition toward an aging society is a global phenomenon. An increase in the aging population directly challenges the government positions and public expenditures as it directly affects a country's aggregate demand and, thus, the country's income level. This paper investigates the impact of an aging population on the size of government spending. Using an updated dataset of 87 countries from 1996 to 2017, we study the aggregate level and each composition of government expenditures. Furthermore, we investigate whether the aging population influences the allocation of government spending toward different categories and economic growth changes. The paper uses the generalized method of moment (GMM) model for the dynamic panel data analysis to address the endogeneity problem. Our main findings suggest that an increase in the old-age population significantly induces higher aggregate government spending but only in developed countries and in particular on the spending in the social protection and environment categories. However, the aging society leads to lower government expenditure on education. Other critical findings reveal that changes in some compositions of government spending toward cultural expenditures impact growth slowdown, while an allocation toward education spending positively impacts economic growth.

Government sectoral spending and human development in Nigeria: Is there a link?

The continuous increase in government expenditure in the last three decades without a commensurate improvement in all known indicators of development has generated heated debates among scholars as to the justification for the persistent rise in the annual expenditure of the government. Therefore, this study examined the effects of government sectoral spending on human development in Nigeria using annual data spanning the period 1986–2021. This study contributed to the literature by examining the effects of government sectoral spending on human development using a robust human development index that captures the multifaceted state of economic development in terms of educational attainment, life expectancy and per capita income, unlike previous studies that concentrated on aggregate government spending and used the gross domestic product as an indicator of development. Surprisingly, however, results from the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model employed indicated that both in the short and long run, there is no link between government sectoral spending and human development in Nigeria. Although, outcomes from ECMs suggest that government sectoral spending may affect human development in the long run.

Fiscal Policy, Private Investment and Manufacturing Sector Performance: Empirical Evidence from Nigeria with ARDL Technique

One of the greatest challenges of the Sub-Saharan African economies today is how to develop the appropriate model that will propel development in the continent. The manufacturing sector instances in China, Malaysia, Taiwan, Korea and Japan are clear models to adopt for Nigeria. The question now is, what has Nigeria been doing to develop the manufacturing sector? To this end, this study set out to examine the effect of fiscal policy and private investment on the performance of the manufacturing sector in Nigeria from 1981 to 2021. The study is time series in nature and made use of the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) modelling technique. It was found that domestic private investment and aggregate government spending exert a significant positive influence on the manufacturing sector performance in the long run, while the influence from tax and government revenue was significantly negative. It was then recommended that government should improve on the factors that attract more FDI inflows into the country; boosts requisite educational training skills and financial market depth to drive the influence of domestic private investment on the manufacturing sector; increase government spending on the manufacturing sector development; and that tax revenues be judiciously utilized in the long-run so that they can positively impact the manufacturing sector.

The Government Spending Multiplier in a Multisector Economy

We study the effects of aggregate government spending shocks in a production network economy where sectors differ in their price rigidity, factor intensities, use of intermediate inputs, and contribution to final demand. The model implies an aggregate value-added multiplier that is 75 percent (and $0.32) larger than that obtained in the average one-sector economy. This amplification is mainly driven by input–output linkages and—to a lesser extent—sectoral heterogeneity in price rigidity. Aggregate government spending shocks also lead to heterogeneous responses of sectoral value added, which are larger among upstream industries. We present novel empirical evidence supporting this prediction. (JEL E12, E16, E23, E43, E52, E62, H50)

Revisiting the nexus between fiscal decentralization and government size - The role of ethnic fragmentation

The extant literature on the relationship between fiscal decentralization and government size provides mixed evidence. In this paper, we use a panel of 65 developed and developing countries from 1972 to 2013 to analyse the role of ethnic fragmentation as a mediator in this relationship. Using FGLS for heterogeneous panels, system GMM and instrumental variable methods, we find that fiscal decentralization is inversely associated with government size, but the relationship is positive and significant when variation in ethnic fragmentation is considered. Our findings support the theory that the heterogeneous needs and preferences of an ethnically fragmented region lead to an increase in the demand for public goods and services provision, thereby increasing the level of aggregate government spending through fiscal decentralization. The results are robust across alternate definitions of fiscal decentralization, model specification, and estimation methods.

Output Volatility and Government Size in Nigeria

Abstract Research background: Output volatility has potentially adverse consequences on the economy and the stabilizing role of fiscal policy is linked to the share of government size in an economy. Hence, given the relative large share of government in developing countries, government size is expected to play an important role in stabilizing output volatility. Purpose: This study examines the relationship between output volatility and government size in Nigeria. The study seeks to establish if government size mitigates output volatility in Nigeria. Research methodology: The study employs the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) technique after conducting stationarity and co-integration tests. Results: The results of the ARDL estimate showed that government size lessens output volatility but the magnitude was insignificant. Further, the study found that volatility in aggregate government spending; international oil price and public debt were significant determinants of output volatility in Nigeria. Novelty: This showed that the automatic stabilization role of government size on output volatility could not be established. The automatic stabilization role of fiscal policy can be improved by increasing social security transfers (pension payment), payments of unemployment benefits and increasing civil servants minimum wage.

Dynamic Effect of Public Expenditure on Oil Producing Economy: An Empirical Evidence from Nigeria

The paper examines the economic growth effect of government expenditure in Nigeria employing annual data from 1970 to 2017. Specifically, the study examines the short- and long-term effect of Federal Government total, recurrent, and capital expenditure on the real Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Different from the existing literature, the paper also shows the extent of oil sector integration, at the sectoral level, by investigating the effect of government expenditure on the agriculture and manufacturing sectors. The analysis was carried out using the Autoregressive Distribute Lag (ARDL) technique. Empirical results show that the aggregate government spending has a positive effect on the real GDP on the short and long-run. Mixed outcomes were realized when the effect of government expenditure on agricultural and manufacturing sector outputs were considered. In the short-run, total government expenditure cause agriculture sector output to decline. The long-run accumulated government spending leads to an increase in the agricultural sector output. The total government expenditure exerts a negative effect on the manufacturing sector output in the short-run. The effect was positive in the long-run. Outcomes from analyzing the differential effect of expenditure types on the real GDP show that capital expenditure had no impact on the real GDP, while government recurrent expenditure had a positive significant impact. Thus, efforts should be geared towards increasing capital spending for commensurate integration of oil benefits in the Nigerian economy.

The effect of government spending innovations on the Ethiopian economy

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to estimate the size of government spending components’ multipliers for the Ethiopian economy over the sample period of 2001Q1 up to 2017Q4.Design/methodology/approachThe effects of government spending are analyzed by applying short-run contemporaneous restrictions for the identification of shocks in an SVAR in order to estimate multipliers for the small open economy. Accordingly, recursive identification scheme is used in this study.FindingsFrom the impulse response functions, the authors found that aggregate government spending is less effective in stimulating the economy for the study period as evidenced by almost zero multipliers. This can be due to many structural and conjunctural factors that tend to lower the multiplier effects. At a disaggregate level, real GDP responds negatively to capital spending while its effect on recurrent spending is positive and insignificant on impact. The variation to real GDP is best explained by the variation in capital spending as compared to recurrent spending.Originality/valueThough almost none in number, little research has been conducted in Ethiopia related to the effect of government spending shock on output. But this research deviates from the previous study by introducing a new methodology which is SVAR with cholesky decomposition. The previous study, however, used Bayesian VAR. Besides to that, using cholesky identification scheme, government spending is decomposed in to recurrent and capital spending to see the effect of government spending components on output and government spending multipliers are also computed both at an aggregate and disaggregate level.

Does Infrastructure Matters in Government Spending? A Case Study of Jammu and Kashmir (India) with Cointegration Approach

This study is an attempt to investigate the impact of infrastructure level on government spending in short and long run and also to find the tendency of infrastructure level to stabilise any disequilibrium in government spending in long run. Infrastructure is related to the quality and quantity of goods and services provided by government to the population, to fulfil their diverse demands. The state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) is not an exception; the increasing trend in different aspects of population and rising needs and aspirations of the growing population forces the government to increase expenditure on that count, which results in increase in aggregate government spending. Using multivariate cointegration technique followed by vector error correction model (VECM) model on annual time-series data for the period from 1984 to 2013 with broader data set of infrastructure dimension, the study found that the infrastructure variables cause major variation in government expenditure in short as well as in long run. Study shows that infrastructure related to health, education, roads and portable water produce positive and significant impact on the growth of government spending and infrastructure related to these dimensions has significant tendency to stabilise any disequilibrium in government spending in long run. JEL Classification: H3, H5, H53, I

Military Burden and Economic Growth: Evidence from a Multivariate Cointegration Analysis

The causation relationship between economic growth and military spending in developing countries was subject to intense debate in recent years. This study examines the causal relationship between aggregate government spending and economic growth in Algeria for the period 1980-2010. We also break down the aggregate government spending into military and civilian spending and assess their impact on economic growth. Both bivariate and multivariate co-integration is utilized to determine the type and direction of causality. Using Johansen’s co-integration procedure and VECM, the study showed the existence of uni-directional causality between economic growth and military spending. This study also uses the variance decomposition analysis to assess the dynamic effect of one variable on the other two variables in the model beyond the sample period.

Analysing the effects of fiscal policy shocks in the South African economy

This paper is the first one to analyse the effect of aggregate government spending and taxes on output for South Africa using three types of a calibrated DSGE model and more data driven models such as a structural vector error correction model (SVECM) and a time-varying parameter VAR (TVP-VAR) to capture possible asymmetries and time variation of fiscal impulses. The impulse responses indicate first, that increases in government expenditure have a positive impact, albeit (at times) less than unity, on GDP in the short run; second, over the long run, the impact of government expenditure on GDP is insignificant; and third, increases in taxes decrease GDP over the short run, while having negligible effects over longer horizons.

Government Spending Reloaded: Fundamentalness and Heterogeneity in Fiscal SVARs

Using a large information Bayesian VAR, we approximate the flow of information received by economic agents to investigate the effects of government spending. We document robust evidence that insufficiency of information in conventional models could explain inconsistent results across samples and identifications (Recursive Structural VAR and Expectational VAR). Furthermore, we report heterogeneous effects of government spending components. While aggregate government spending does not appear to produce a strong stimulative effect with output multiplier around 0.7, government investment components have multipliers well above unity. Also, state and local consumption, which captures investment in education and health, elicits a strong response.

Public Expenditures, Taxes, Federal Transfers, and Endogenous Growth

AbstractThis paper extends the Barro (1990) model with single aggregate government spending and one flat income tax to include public expenditures and taxes by multiple levels of government. It derives the rate of endogenous growth and, with both simulations and special examples, examines how that rate changes with respect to federal income tax, local taxes, and federal transfers. It also discusses the growth and welfare‐maximizing choices of taxes and federal transfers.

Economic growth and government spending in Malaysia: a re-examination of Wagner and Keynesian views

By making use of annual data from Malaysia for the period 1970 to 2006, this paper examines Wagner’s law and the Keynesian hypothesis concerning the link between real government spending and real GDP. Unlike most existing studies, we utilize both a bivariate and a multivariate model. In addition, we consider two cases: one that focuses on the link between aggregate government spending and GDP and the other where the link between government spending on education and GDP is considered. The use of a multivariate model serves to reduce the problem of serious misspecification which appears to have been ignored by most existing studies. The presence of cointegration is investigated by means of Auto Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach. This approach also allows one to distinguish between the short and the long-run relationships. Within the context of a bivariate model, our empirical analysis reveals that aggregate government spending Granger causes the real GDP which supports Wagner’s law. However, in a multivariate framework, we found support for the Keynesian hypothesis suggesting that omitted variables bias can significantly alter the validity of Wagner’s law.

Asymmetric output growth effects of government spending: Cross-sectional and panel data evidence

Using a model that accommodates asymmetric adjustments of output growth to changes in growth of government spending, the effects of aggregate and disaggregate government spending variables on output growth are examined. Both cross-section and panel regression estimations are conducted. Robustness of results to joint-endogeneity of output and government spending, alternative conditioning variables, and cointegration is investigated. Aggregate government spending appears to have positive output growth effects particularly in periods of below-trend growth in this variable. The government sector's productivity appears to be higher than non-government sector's productivity when spending growth is below-trend growth and only for non-OECD countries; no differences in sectoral productivities are detected for OECD countries. Government consumption spending has no significant output growth effects, but government investment spending has positive output growth effects particularly when its growth falls below its trend-growth; this favorable effect turns negative when government investment spending growth exceeds its trend-growth. Results are robust across alternative model specifications and estimation methods.

Measuring the Effects of Federal Grants-in-Aid on Total Public Sector Size

Empirical studies of intergovernmental grants have applied a partial-equilibrium framework to investigate the marginal effects of grants on the spending by recipient governments, and generally conclude that all grants do stimulate such spending. Although it is tempting to interpret this to mean that an increase in grants therefore always increases aggregate government spending, such a conclusion gives no consideration to the underlying cause of a change in grant amounts or their financing. A general-equilibrium model that explains the aggregate effect of grants, as well as their existence, is used herein to estimate the aggregate stimulative effect of intergovernmental grants.