Download or read book Public Investment as an Engine of Growth written by Mr.Andrew M. Warner and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2014-08-11 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper looks at the empirical record whether big infrastructure and public capital drives have succeeded in accelerating economic growth in low-income countries. It looks at big long-lasting drives in public capital spending, as these were arguably clear and exogenous policy decisions. On average the evidence shows only a weak positive association between investment spending and growth and only in the same year, as lagged impacts are not significant. Furthermore, there is little evidence of long term positive impacts. Some individual countries may be exceptions to this general result, as for example Ethiopia in recent years, as high public investment has coincided with high GDP growth, but it is probably too early to draw definitive conclusions. The fact that the positive association is largely instantaneous argues for the importance of either reverse causality, as capital spending tends to be cut in slumps and increased in booms, or Keynesian demand effects, as spending boosts output in the short run. It argues against the importance of long term productivity effects, as these are triggered by the completed investments (which take several years) and not by the mere spending on the investments. In fact a slump in growth rather than a boom has followed many public capital drives of the past. Case studies indicate that public investment drives tend eventually to be financed by borrowing and have been plagued by poor analytics at the time investment projects were chosen, incentive problems and interest-group-infested investment choices. These observations suggest that the current public investment drives will be more likely to succeed if governments do not behave as in the past, and instead take analytical issues seriously and safeguard their decision process against interests that distort public investment decisions.

Download or read book The Growth Report written by Commission on Growth and Development and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2008-07-23 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The result of two years work by 19 experienced policymakers and two Nobel prize-winning economists, 'The Growth Report' is the most complete analysis to date of the ingredients which, if used in the right country-specific recipe, can deliver growth and help lift populations out of poverty.

Download or read book Public Investment as an Engine of Growth written by Mr.Andrew M. Warner and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2014-08-11 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper looks at the empirical record whether big infrastructure and public capital drives have succeeded in accelerating economic growth in low-income countries. It looks at big long-lasting drives in public capital spending, as these were arguably clear and exogenous policy decisions. On average the evidence shows only a weak positive association between investment spending and growth and only in the same year, as lagged impacts are not significant. Furthermore, there is little evidence of long term positive impacts. Some individual countries may be exceptions to this general result, as for example Ethiopia in recent years, as high public investment has coincided with high GDP growth, but it is probably too early to draw definitive conclusions. The fact that the positive association is largely instantaneous argues for the importance of either reverse causality, as capital spending tends to be cut in slumps and increased in booms, or Keynesian demand effects, as spending boosts output in the short run. It argues against the importance of long term productivity effects, as these are triggered by the completed investments (which take several years) and not by the mere spending on the investments. In fact a slump in growth rather than a boom has followed many public capital drives of the past. Case studies indicate that public investment drives tend eventually to be financed by borrowing and have been plagued by poor analytics at the time investment projects were chosen, incentive problems and interest-group-infested investment choices. These observations suggest that the current public investment drives will be more likely to succeed if governments do not behave as in the past, and instead take analytical issues seriously and safeguard their decision process against interests that distort public investment decisions.

Download or read book Unbound written by Heather Boushey and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Financial Times Book of the Year “The strongest documentation I have seen for the many ways in which inequality is harmful to economic growth.” —Jason Furman “A timely and very useful guide...Boushey assimilates a great deal of recent economic research and argues that it amounts to a paradigm shift.” —New Yorker Do we have to choose between equality and prosperity? Decisions made over the past fifty years have created underlying fragilities in our society that make our economy less effective in good times and less resilient to shocks, such as today’s coronavirus pandemic. Many think tackling inequality would require such heavy-handed interference that it would stifle economic growth. But a careful look at the data suggests nothing could be further from the truth—and that reducing inequality is in fact key to delivering future prosperity. Presenting cutting-edge economics with verve, Heather Boushey shows how rising inequality is a drain on talent, ideas, and innovation, leading to a concentration of capital and a damaging under-investment in schools, infrastructure, and other public goods. We know inequality is fueling social unrest. Boushey shows persuasively that it is also a serious drag on growth. “In this outstanding book, Heather Boushey...shows that, beyond a point, inequality damages the economy by limiting the quantity and quality of human capital and skills, blocking access to opportunity, underfunding public services, facilitating predatory rent-seeking, weakening aggregate demand, and increasing reliance on unsustainable credit.” —Martin Wolf, Financial Times “Think rising levels of inequality are just an inevitable outcome of our market-driven economy? Then you should read Boushey’s well-argued, well-documented explanation of why you’re wrong.” —David Rotman, MIT Technology Review

Download or read book Successful Transitions from Public to Private Sector Led Growth Lessons for Benin written by Aissatou Diallo and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2021-12-03 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries, like Benin, have scaled up public investment during the last decade. Such a strategy contributed to the improvement of infrastructure, but also to a build-up of debt vulnerabilities. Looking forward, the planned fiscal consolidation will result in some restraint of public spending, and, in particular, public investment. In this context, maintaining or even raising the region’s economic growth will require an offset by the private sector. The analysis draws lessons from countries that have successfully transitioned from public investment to private investment-led growth using a global sample starting in the mid-1980s. These lessons highlight policies that have been crucial in fostering a rebound of private investment in the wake of a contraction of public investment. The analytical framework proposed by Hausman, Rodrik and Velasco (2005) is used to identify and classify such policies. Finally, the paper analyses how the identified policies could help Benin achieving a smooth transition from public to private sector-led growth.

Download or read book Investing in Public Infrastructure written by Manoj Atolia and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2017-05-04 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do governments in developing economies invest in roads and not enough in schools? In the presence of distortionary taxation and debt aversion, the different pace at which roads and schools contribute to economic growth turns out to be central to this decision. Specifically, while costs are front-loaded for both types of investment, the growth benefits of schools accrue with a delay. To put things in perspective, with a “big push,” even assuming a large (15 percent) return differential in favor of schools, the government would still limit the fraction of the investment scale-up going to schools to about a half. Besides debt aversion, political myopia also turns out to be a crucial determinant of public investment composition. A “big push,” by accelerating growth outcomes, mitigates myopia—but at the expense of greater risks to fiscal and debt sustainability. Tied concessional financing and grants can potentially mitigate the adverse effects of both debt aversion and political myopia.

Download or read book Debt Sustainability Public Investment and Natural Resources in Developing Countries written by Mr.Giovanni Melina and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2014-04-01 with total page 77 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper presents the DIGNAR (Debt, Investment, Growth, and Natural Resources) model, which can be used to analyze the debt sustainability and macroeconomic effects of public investment plans in resource-abundant developing countries. DIGNAR is a dynamic, stochastic model of a small open economy. It has two types of households, including poor households with no access to financial markets, and features traded and nontraded sectors as well as a natural resource sector. Public capital enters production technologies, while public investment is subject to inefficiencies and absorptive capacity constraints. The government has access to different types of debt (concessional, domestic and external commercial) and a resource fund, which can be used to finance public investment plans. The resource fund can also serve as a buffer to absorb fiscal balances for given projections of resource revenues and public investment plans. When the fund is drawn down to its minimal value, a combination of external and domestic borrowing can be used to cover the fiscal gap in the short to medium run. Fiscal adjustments through tax rates and government non-capital expenditures—which may be constrained by ceilings and floors, respectively—are then triggered to maintain debt sustainability. The paper illustrates how the model can be particularly useful to assess debt sustainability in countries that borrow against future resource revenues to scale up public investment.

Download or read book Jump Starting America written by Jonathan Gruber and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2019-04-09 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The untold story of how America once created the most successful economy the world has ever seen—and how we can do it again. The American economy glitters on the outside, but the reality is quite different. Job opportunities and economic growth are increasingly concentrated in a few crowded coastal enclaves. Corporations and investors are disproportionately developing technologies that benefit the wealthiest Americans in the most prosperous areas -- and destroying middle class jobs elsewhere. To turn this tide, we must look to a brilliant and all-but-forgotten American success story and embark on a plan that will create the industries of the future -- and the jobs that go with them. Beginning in 1940, massive public investment generated breakthroughs in science and technology that first helped win WWII and then created the most successful economy the world has ever seen. Private enterprise then built on these breakthroughs to create new industries -- such as radar, jet engines, digital computers, mobile telecommunications, life-saving medicines, and the internet-- that became the catalyst for broader economic growth that generated millions of good jobs. We lifted almost all boats, not just the yachts. Jonathan Gruber and Simon Johnson tell the story of this first American growth engine and provide the blueprint for a second. It's a visionary, pragmatic, sure-to-be controversial plan that will lead to job growth and a new American economy in places now left behind.

Download or read book Beyond Economic Growth written by Tatyana P. Soubbotina and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book, which draws on data published by the World Bank, is addressed to teachers, students, and all those interested in exploring issues of global development.

Download or read book Investing in America s Workforce written by Carl E. Van Horn and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book China s Economic Growth Prospects written by Cai Fang and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2016-01-29 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: China has grown rapidly since the reform initiation of the 1970s. China’s Economic Growth Prospects narrates the contribution of demographic transition to recent economic growth in China, and provides suggestions for ways in which it can sustain growth over the next few decades. The expert author provides reasons for the economic slowdown since the second decade of the twenty-first century; explores the challenges facing China’s long-term sustainability of growth with the disappearance of demographic dividend; and proposes policy suggestions. He concludes that, in order to avoid the middle-income trap, economic growth in China must transform from an inputs-driven pattern, to a productivity-driven pattern. Academics, researchers and students of economics and business, particularly those specialising in China, will find this book to be a useful resource. Investment bankers, journalists, politicians and policy makers will find the discussions of past experience and the future potential of the Chinese economy to be of interest.

Download or read book Improving Public Infrastructure in the Philippines written by Mr.Takuji Komatsuzaki and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2016-02-29 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper explores the macroeconomic effects of improving public infrastructure in the Philippines. After benchmarking the Philippines relative to its neighbors in terms of level of public capital and quality of public infrastructure, and public investment efficiency, it uses model simulations to assess the macroeconomic implications of raising public investment and improving public investment efficiency. The main results are as follows: (i) increasing public infrastructure investment results in sustained gains in output; (ii) the effects of improving public investment efficiency are substantial; and (iii) deficit-financed increases in public investment lead to higher borrowing costs that constrain output increases over time, underscoring the importance of revenue mobilization.

Download or read book Government Expenditure and Economic Growth written by International Monetary Fund and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 1989-05-15 with total page 30 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper examines the empirical evidence on the contribution that government and, in particular, capital expenditure make to the growth performance of a sample of developing countries. Using the Denison growth accounting approach, this study finds that social expenditures may have a significant impact on growth in the short run, but infrastructure expenditures may have little influence. While current expenditures for directly productive purposes may exert a positive influence, capital expenditure in these sectors appears to exert a negative influence. Experiments with other explanatory variables confirm the importance of the growth of exports to the overall growth rate.

Download or read book The Economic Growth Engine written by Robert U. Ayres and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 435 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It gives me great pleasure to review this important book. I recommend it highly to any physicist with an interest or curiosity about this economy thing within which we operate. . . There is no excuse not to get this invaluable volume onto your bookshelf. Simon Roberts, Institute of Physics Energy Group This book addresses a very important topic, namely economic growth analysis from the angle of energy and material flows. The treatment is well balanced in terms of research and interpretation of the broader literature. The book not only contains a variety of empirical indicators, statistical analyses and insights, but also offers an unusually complete and pluralistic view on theorizing about economic growth and technological change. This results in a number of refreshing perspectives on known ideas and literatures. The text is so attractively written that I found it very difficult to stop reading. All in all, this is a very original and important contribution to the everlasting debate on growth versus environment. Jeroen C.J.M. van den Bergh, University of Barcelona, Spain and Free University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Would you want your great-grandchildren in 2100AD to have a 22nd-century industrial economy? If so, read this book to grasp how strongly wealth depends on energy and its efficient use. Start treating fossil energy not as continuing income, but as one-time energy capital to spend on efficiency and long-term sustainable energy production. Otherwise, your descendants will inherit a broken 20th-century economy that only worked with cheap fossil fuels. They will not be rich and they will wonder what their ancestors were thinking. John R. Mashey, PhD, former Chief Scientist, Silicon Graphics Current economic theory attributes most income growth to technical progress. However, since technical progress can neither be defined nor measured, no one really knows what policies will encourage income growth. Ayres and Warr show that access to useful work, which can be defined and measured, explain the bulk of post-1900 income changes in Japan, Britain and the USA. They see rising real prices for fossil fuel and stagnating efficiencies of converting raw energy into useful work as a threat to continued income growth. This brilliant and original work has profound policy implications for future income growth without significant improvements in energy conversion efficiency. Thomas Casten, Chairman, Recycled Energy Development LLC Following the up-and-down energy shock of 2008, Ayres and Warr offer a unique analysis critical to our economic future. They argue that useful work produced by energy and energy services is far more important to overall GDP growth than conventional economic theory assumes. Their new theory, based on extensive empirical and theoretical analysis, has important implications for economists, businessmen and policymakers for anybody concerned with our economic future. Ayres and Warr argue persuasively that economic growth is not only endogenous but has been driven for the past two centuries largely by the declining effective cost of energy. If their new theory is correct, the inevitable future rise of the real cost of energy (beyond the $147 oil price peak in July 2008), could halt economic growth in the US and other advanced countries unless we dramatically improve energy with technology. J. Paul Horne, independent international market economist The historic link between output (GDP) growth and employment has weakened. Since there is no quantitively verifiable economic theory to explain past growth, this unique book explores the fundamental relationship between thermodynamics (physical work) and economics. The authors take a realistic approach to explaining the relationship between technological progress, thermodynamic efficiency and economic growth. Their findings are a step toward the integration of neo-classical and evolutionary perspectives on endogenous economic growth, concluding in a fundam

Download or read book Infrastructure and Economic Growth in Asia written by John Cockburn and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-12-05 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Public spending on infrastructure plays an important role in promoting economic growth and poverty alleviation. Empirical studies unequivocally show that under-investment in infrastructure limit economic growth. At the same time, numerous other studies have shown that investment in infrastructure can be a highly effective tool in fighting poverty reduction1. In that context, the financing of infrastructure has been a critical element of most economic growth and poverty reduction strategies in developing countries, since the start of this millennium. This book provides a comparative analysis of the aggregate and sectoral implications of higher spending on infrastructure in three very different Asian countries: China, Pakistan, and the Philippines. Particular attention is paid to the role of alternative financing mechanisms for increasing public infrastructure investment, namely distortionary and non-distortionary means of financing. The book will be of interest to scholars and policy-makers concerned with economic growth in developing countries.

Download or read book On the Substitution of Private and Public Capital in Production written by Zidong An and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2019-11-01 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most macroeconomic models assume that aggregate output is generated by a specification for the production function with total physical capital as a key input. Implicitly this assumes that private and public capital stocks are perfect substitutes. In this paper we test this assumption by estimating a nested-CES production function whereas the two types of capital are considered separately along with labor as inputs. The estimation is based on our newly developed dataset on public and private capital stocks for 151 countries over a period of 1960-2014 consistent with Penn World Table version 9. We find evidence against perfect substitutability between public and private capital, especially for emerging and LIDCs, with the point estimate of the elasticity of substitution estimated closely around 3.

Download or read book World Development Report 1994 written by and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 1994 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: World Development Report 1994 examines the link between infrastructure and development and explores ways in which developing countries can improve both the provision and the quality of infrastructure services. In recent decades, developing countries have made substantial investments in infrastructure, achieving dramatic gains for households and producers by expanding their access to services such as safe water, sanitation, electric power, telecommunications, and transport. Even more infrastructure investment and expansion are needed in order to extend the reach of services - especially to people living in rural areas and to the poor. But as this report shows, the quantity of investment cannot be the exclusive focus of policy. Improving the quality of infrastructure service also is vital. Both quantity and quality improvements are essential to modernize and diversify production, help countries compete internationally, and accommodate rapid urbanization. The report identifies the basic cause of poor past performance as inadequate institutional incentives for improving the provision of infrastructure. To promote more efficient and responsive service delivery, incentives need to be changed through commercial management, competition, and user involvement. Several trends are helping to improve the performance of infrastructure. First, innovation in technology and in the regulatory management of markets makes more diversity possible in the supply of services. Second, an evaluation of the role of government is leading to a shift from direct government provision of services to increasing private sector provision and recent experience in many countries with public-private partnerships is highlighting new ways to increase efficiency and expand services. Third, increased concern about social and environmental sustainability has heightened public interest in infrastructure design and performance.