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The fiscal policy's impact on the real exchange rates is highly controversial in theory and practice but noteworthy for macroeconomic policy. This issue is more pertinent in developing countries with an active fiscal policy or wider fiscal space but is explored less. To our knowledge, the fiscal policy impact on the real exchange rate in India is not documented. Against this backdrop, this study explores this in India involving disaggregated data of government consumption and investment spending and a few related variables like trade openness, private consumption spending, and money supply for the period 1996:1–2023:1. The results corroborate long-run associations of real exchange rate and some combinations of the selected other variables. The real exchange rate dynamics estimated through the cointegrated vector autoregressive model followed by an impulse response analysis have shown that government investment spending causes a real appreciation. In contrast, government and private consumption spending exert pressure to depreciate the real exchange rate. Trade openness is another potent predictor of the real exchange rate. On the other hand, no significant impact of the money supply on the real exchange rate is noticed. The results accentuate effective fiscal allocation may be a policy tool for stabilizing the Indian rupee. The unique findings on the Indian economy may also help understand the fiscal effect of real exchange rates in other developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the influence of compensation spending reviews on government policy by analysing the case of South Africa, focusing on an extended review of the drivers of payroll costs. It addresses the decision by the government to renege on a wage agreement with public sector unions and the subsequent backlash from labour unions, and explains how spending reviews contributed to this. The paper outlines the methodology used for the analysis and summarises the key findings of the compensation spending reviews conducted between 2017 and 2020. It also discusses the implications of the decision and subsequent developments for compensation spending in South Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, governments directly funded vaccine research and development (R&D), quickly leading to multiple effective vaccines and resulting in enormous health and economic benefits to society. We develop a simple economic model showing this feat could potentially be repeated for other health challenges. Based on inputs from the economic and medical literatures, the model yields estimates of optimal R&D spending on treatments and vaccines for known diseases. Taking a global and societal perspective, we estimate the social benefits of such spending and a corresponding rate of return. Applications to Streptococcus A vaccines and Alzheimer's disease treatments demonstrate the potential of enhanced research and development funding to unlock massive global health and health-related benefits. We estimate that these benefits range from 2 to 60 trillion (2020 US$) and that the corresponding rates of return on R&D spending range from 12% to 23% per year for 30 y. We discuss the current shortfall in R&D spending and public policies that can move current funding closer to the optimal level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sporting events are drivers of urban life and have the potential to bring substantial short-term economic benefits to the host region by attracting visitor spending. This study has analyzed the impact generated by the 2021 Senior and Elite Badminton World Championships that took place in Huelva, Spain. The objectives are (i) determine the economic impact and determining factors; and (ii) the impact on the development of badminton in the region. For this purpose, the study used the Cost-Benefit Analysis approach to estimate the cashflows through a survey applied to both events. The results reflect a direct positive impact on the region's economy, although the results are not as satisfactory at the sporting level. The article contributes to the few mid-range event studies on a minority sport in a city with a highly developed tourism sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of European Journal of Applied Economics is the property of Singidunum University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Corruption is a phenomenon that is not just restricted to less developed nations, but also touches developed countries like those in the European Union, often seen as one of the least corrupt economic areas in the world. Corruption practices and perceptions can seriously hinder economic growth and innovation, This can be due to lower access to corporate funding, greater cost of capital, its effects on competition, misallocation of resources, and distortions in the composition of public spending and the effectiveness of government policies. This paper first provides a short discussion and an overview of some academic literature on the link between corruption, financing decisions and economic growth. It then summarizes the findings of the five papers in this special issue on the topic of Corruption in a European context, discusses some insights from their results and finally points out at some avenues for future research in related topics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research explores the impact of infrastructure on member states' economic growth in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Utilizing panel secondary data sourced from the World Bank Development Indicators (WDI) and the African Infrastructure Development Index (AIDI) across all fifteen ECOWAS Member States over eighteen years, the study employs the panel Non-linear Autoregressive Distributed Lag (NARDL) model and the Westerlund co-integration test for analysis. The findings reveal that investments in infrastructure, improvements in the African Development Index, and enhancements in the Electricity Composite Index significantly contribute to the economic growth of ECOWAS countries. Specifically, infrastructure investment is associated with a 0.01 percent increase in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the ECOWAS countries studied. In comparison, the African Development Index and the Electricity Composite Index are linked to increases in GDP by 0.292 percent and 0.987 percent, respectively, in the long term. Based on these outcomes, the study recommends that ECOWAS country authorities enhance policies to optimize government spending on infrastructure quality. Furthermore, adopting qualityenhancing and efficiency-driven financing policies in infrastructure is advocated to complement ECOWAS's ongoing infrastructural development efforts. The realization of these recommendations hinges on the availability of accurate data for informing decisions and guiding policymakers. Hence, the study underscores the need for the ECOWAS Commission to bolster its capacity for collecting reliable data on infrastructure variables and other indicators. It also proposes that future research should focus on promoting sub-regional peer-review mechanisms for infrastructure indicators among member states and establishing structures to fortify infrastructure in West Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We contrast the net fiscal position (NFP) of immigrants versus natives using data from the European Survey on Living Conditions for 2007–2015. Using a quantile regression approach, we find that European and non-European migrants have a different fiscal position from natives only on the extreme tails of the NFP distribution. Non-EU migrants contribute even more than natives in the top quantile of the NFP, but they are more fiscally dependent than native citizens in the lowest quantile. These findings suggest that immigrants are not a public finance burden and do not increase public spending in the destination country. We also examine the relationship between migrants' fiscal position and the fiscal perception of natives versus migrants as measured in the European Social Survey. We believe that by examining the effects of migrants on public spending, we can gain valuable insights into the economic implications of immigration and develop evidence-based migration policies, fostering integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study uncovers how government interventions, in terms of stringency and support, shape coronavirus disease 2019's (COVID-19) detrimental impact on organizations' performance. Specifically, this paper studies whether stringency and support play complementary or substitutive roles in lowering COVID-19's impact on organizations' performance. Design/methodology/approach: The authors gathered primary data from USA manufacturing companies and combined this with secondary data from the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT) to test the proposed model with structural equation modeling (SEM). Findings: The results show that the stringency approach increases the detrimental impact on both operational and financial performance, while economic support (to households) and fiscal spending (to organizations) work differently on lowering the impacts of COVID-19. Further, these combinative effects only influence the firm's operational performance, albeit in opposite directions. Originality/value: This study advances the knowledge of government interventions by examining stringency and support's direct and interaction effects on firm performance as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings contribute to the literature by uncovering the unique roles of both supportive policies, thus differentiating economic support (to individuals/households) from fiscal spending (to organizations) and providing important academic, managerial and policy insights into how government should best initiate and blend stringency and support policies during the COVID-19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Myopia involves giving disproportionate weight to outcomes that occur close to the present. Myopia in people's evaluations of political outcomes and proposals threatens effective policymaking. It can lead to inefficient spending just before elections, cause inaction on important future policy challenges, and create incentives for government interventions aimed at boosting short-term performance at the expense of long-term welfare. But, are people generally myopic? Existing evidence comes mostly from studies that disregard either the future or collective outcomes. Political science characterizes people as myopic based on how they retrospectively evaluate collective outcomes, such as the state of the economy. Behavioral economics and psychology find that people make myopic choices involving future individual outcomes, such as money or personal health. To characterize myopia more generally, we offer two innovations: First, we adapt measurement approaches from behavioral economics and psychology to precisely gauge myopia over politically relevant collective outcomes. Second, we estimate myopia using the same approach for collective political outcomes in both past and future. We conduct two surveys on three different samples (including a large probability-based sample) asking respondents to evaluate national conditions randomly described as past or future while holding constant the domain, information about conditions, and the elicitation method. Results show that prospective evaluations are significantly less myopic than retrospective evaluations. People are often not myopic at all when looking to the future. This surprising pattern calls for more research to probe its robustness and spell out how low prospective myopia might lead to forward-looking policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of foreign aid and taxes on government spending for 67 developing countries during 1980–2013 using dynamic heterogeneous (panel) time-series techniques. We find that spending, aid and tax ratios comprise an equilibrium (cointegrated) relation. On average, the aid coefficients (and marginal impacts) are positive but smaller than the tax coefficients, indicating that in the long-run and short-run taxes have a stronger association with expenditures than aid. Central to this heterogeneous relationship is the political calculus between aid and tax—measured according to accountability and bureaucratic costs—whereby recipients offset the political costs of raising taxes against the political costs of receiving more aid. Once measures of political costs are incorporated into the analysis, we find the political costs of aid to be higher than those of tax, reinforcing the primary assertion that for spending, taxes are more important than aid. Countries with higher political costs of aid typically show no aid-spending relationship, while those with lower political costs of aid tend to show an aid-spending relationship. The findings are largely when replicated once we split total spending into capital and consumption spending. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how the transmission of government portfolio risk arising from maturity operations depends on the stance of monetary/fiscal policy. Accounting for risk premia in the fiscal theory allows the government portfolio to affect expected inflation, even in a frictionless economy. The effects of maturity rebalancing on expected inflation in the fiscal theory depend directly on the conditional nominal term premium, giving rise to an optimal debt‐maturity policy that is state‐dependent. In a calibrated macrofinance model, we demonstrate that maturity operations have sizable effects on expected inflation and output through our novel risk transmission mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Government spending is a policy instrument used to sustain economic development and improve social welfare. Empirical observations, however, reveal a significant decrease in the government spending to GDP ratio for the United States. In addition, the United States has been observed to exhibit a rise in firm heterogeneity in productivity in recent decades. This paper shows that the optimal size of government expenditure will decrease as firm heterogeneity increases. We thus indicate that the rise in firm heterogeneity in productivity may serve as a plausible vehicle to explain the decline in the share of government spending in GDP for the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of GWP: Gesellschaft Wirtschaft Politik is the property of Verlag Barbara Budrich GmbH and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The aim of this paper is to analyze interest rates and public spending to provide policy implications. Concretely, it explores the influence of these rates on public expenditure growth as opposite to the traditional direction view, dealing with 216 countries for the 1972–2021 period and estimating system GMM models. A balanced subsample is used for assessing Granger causality through a recent panel technique. The results are robust for the used dependent and target variables and also the methodology. They show that decreasing interest rates are associated with—and in some cases also lead to—lower per capita public expenditure growth. These results can be interpreted as a twofold effect of shifts in relative prices—through fiscal illusion—and of crowding out of private investment with respect to the public sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work examined the causal impact of types of government spending on bank-based financial development. It tests the influences of both government productive and non-productive spending on bank-based financial development. Selected 37 African economies between 1980-2018 were sampled. Both the short -run and long -run effects were assessed using either Feasible Generalized Least Squares (FGLS), Mean Group (MG), Pooled Mean Group (PMG) and Dynamic Common Correlated Effects Mean Group (DCCEMG) estimators. Evidences support the hypotheses that both types of spending contribute positively to bank-based financial development. Bankbased financial development is more responsive to non-productive spending than it is to productive spending. Also, confirm the supportive roles of trade openness and GDP per capita, and the detriment of inflation to bank-based financial development. This study comprehensively unearths the impact of government spending on bank-based financial development in Africa by isolating spending into productive and non-productive types. Governments need to promote dual policies that address spending and financial development. They should avoid detrimental spending and promote enhancing spending within each type above. Spending that attract private agents, investments, saving, and liquidity in the financial sector, trade openness, and economic output should be promoted since these enhances bank-based financial development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Regional Science Policy & Practice is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The parliamentary institution is the nation’s highest legislative body in a democratic system, where it enacts, amends, and approves federal laws, examines government policies and approves government spending. However, in Malaysia, during the Barisan Nasional (BN) era, this institution was frequently criticised due to its numerous flaws. Among them were executive control over parliamentary institutions, disregard for the opposition’s role and unequal development provision between government and opposition parliamentarians. Therefore, during the 14th General Election (GE14) campaign, Pakatan Harapan (PH) promised to implement parliamentary reforms, and that pledge carried PH to victory in the GE14. This article utilised the concept of institutional reform as a tool of analytics to discuss parliamentary institutional reforms during the PH’s governmental term from 2018 to 2020. The primary sources of this study were interviews and secondary sources, which were obtained through books, journals and newspapers. This article argues that the PH government has successfully implemented several parliamentary institutional reforms in only 22 months. The reforms were the reform of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), the establishment of more parliamentary select committees, the restructuring of constituency development funds for members of parliament (MPs) and the appointment of non-partisan speakers. All these reforms have benefited Malaysia’s parliamentary institutions by increasing the role of the opposition, allocating fair constituency development funds to parliamentarians and improving the parliamentary image. Nevertheless, comprehensive reforms were not implemented because the PH government was ousted from power at the end of February 2020 because of the actions of several PH MPs who defected from the party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal Public Administration & Social Management / Administração Pública e Gestão Social is the property of Administracao Publica e Gestao Social and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)