How “big” should government be?

Antonio Afonso ^[1] ; Ludger Schuknecht ^[2]
1. [1] Universidade de Lisboa
  
  Universidade de Lisboa
  
  Socorro, Portugal
2. [2] Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Paris, France
Localización: Economics and Business Letters, ISSN-e 2254-4380, Vol. 8, Nº. 2, 2019 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Quality of public finance), págs. 85-96
Idioma: español
Enlaces
- Texto completo (pdf)

Resumen
- We assess how “big” government should reasonably be in a number of advanced countries.
  
  First, we will link the recent findings of Data Envelope Analysis on efficient public expenditure with the question of the size of the government. Second, we report descriptive analysis of various government performance indicators in relation to public expenditure to provide indications of overall “optimal” spending across spending categories. In principle, the highest savings potential is in the biggest expenditure categories, public consumption and social expenditure.