Agenor, Pierre-Richard: Public capital, growth and welfare. Analytical foundations for public policyX, 252pp. Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford, 2012. Hardcover, ￡27.95

摘要

The analysis of the effects of public capital on economic growth and welfare has recently gained renewed interest. The seminal contribution of Barro (1990), where public spending takes the form of a flow-variable, was the first within the New Growth Theory to demonstrate that governmental activity can produce significant, positive and permanent effects on long-run economic growth. However, only with Futagami et al. (1993) it was also clarified that when public spending comes in the form of a stock-variable, then it can additionally affect an economy's transitional dynamics. Moreover, since the pioneering contribution of Devarajan et al. (1996), economic research has investigated the link between the various components (flow vs. stock) of governmentspending and economic growth, concluding that the functional classification of public expenditure is also crucial.