Public investment and public capital in Israel: Public capital stock and public investment, 2017

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (152) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  

Public investment is a priority spending area, and Estonia is seeking to strengthen the efficiency and effectiveness of its capital expenditure from an already high level. Estonia’s general government capital expenditure has been higher than that of its neighboring comparators,1 EU countries or the average advanced country, at usually well above 5 percent of GDP. It is planned to continue at that level in the medium-term despite an expected decline of external grants from the EU. Thus, the level of public capital stock has been increasing as well as closing a gap to the comparator countries.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (188) ◽  
Author(s):  

The development of infrastructure is one of the pillars of the Emerging Gabon Strategic Plan (PSGE). Implemented as of 2012, the PSGE has been establishing priority strategic guidelines to transform Gabon into an emerging economy by 2025. Its primary aims are to ensure and expedite the country’s sustainable development and growth by focusing on potential growth sectors. Public investment grew continuously from 2009 to 2013, when it peaked at 15.2 percent of GDP; it averaged 5.7 percent growth from 1990 to 2018. At the same time, private investment declined, as did growth and public capital stock. These outcomes indicate that public investment in Gabon does not drive growth and that investment expenditure does not automatically translate into actual accumulation of assets, which raises questions about the efficiency of those outlays.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 22
Author(s):  
Sharmila Devadas ◽  
Steven Pennings

To analyze the effect of an increase in the quantity or quality of public investment on growth, this paper extends the World Bank’s Long-Term Growth Model (LTGM), by separating the total capital stock into public and private portions, with the former adjusted for its quality. The paper presents the LTGM public capital extension and accompanying freely downloadable Excel-based tool. It also constructs a new infrastructure efficiency index, by combining quality indicators for power, roads, and water as a cardinal measure of the quality of public capital in each country. In the model, public investment generates a larger boost to growth if existing stocks of public capital are low, or if public capital is particularly important in the production function. Through the lens of the model and utilizing newly-collated cross-country data, the paper presents three stylized facts and some related policy implications. First, the measured public capital stock is roughly constant as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) across income groups, which implies that the returns to new public investment, and its effect on growth, are roughly constant across development levels. Second, developing countries are relatively short of private capital, which means that private investment provides the largest boost to growth in low-income countries. Third, low-income countries have the lowest quality of public capital and the lowest efficient public capital stock as a share of GDP. Although this does not affect the returns to public investment, it means that improving the efficiency of public investment has a sizable effect on growth in low-income countries. Quantitatively, a permanent 1 ppt GDP increase in public investment boosts growth by around 0.1–0.2 ppts over the following few years (depending on the parameters), with the effect declining over time.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 (356) ◽  
Author(s):  

Ukraine’s public capital stock has been on a declining path over the last 20 years. Having started the period at a relatively high level (99 percent of GDP in 1996), it now ranks amongst the lowest of its comparator countries (56 percent in 2013). Evidence as to the reasons for the deterioration point to significant and persistent weaknesses in the institutional framework surrounding public investment management, inefficient allocation of resources to productive public investment and high levels of perceived corruption. Ukraine currently has an efficiency gap of around 32 percent, which ranks it below average amongst emerging market countries and other comparators. Persistent under-investment, the currently high stock of debt, and ongoing institutional weaknesses, coupled with effects of the conflict in the East could see this gap continuing to grow, absent concerted efforts to reverse recent trends.


Author(s):  
Sebastian Dullien ◽  
Ekaterina Jürgens ◽  
Sebastian Watzka

Chapter 3, by Sebastian Dullien, Ekaterina Jürgens and Sebastian Watzka, reports on German debates about public investment. As with France, underinvestment by the public sector over the past two decades has led to a severe deterioration of the public capital stock. Moreover, demographic change, decarbonization and digitalization pose significant challenges for the German economy which imply additional public investment needs. A detailed sector-by-sector overview of investment requirements concludes that investment requirements add up to at least €450 bn over the next decade. Through a macroeconomic simulation, it is shown that a debt-financed increase of public expenditure of this magnitude would be compatible with keeping the debt-to-GDP-ratio below 60% and would have a positive impact on potential growth.


2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (6) ◽  
pp. 1454-1483 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noritaka Maebayashi ◽  
Takeo Hori ◽  
Koichi Futagami

We construct an endogenous growth model that includes productive public capital and government debt. We assume that the government debt-to-GDP ratio is gradually adjusted to a target level, reflecting the permanent commitment rules in the Stability and Growth Pact or the Maastricht Treaty in the European Union (i.e., the well-known 60% rule). These rules affect government borrowing and public investment. Here, we examine the welfare implications of the permanent commitment rules. We find that fiscal consolidation based on the rules improves social welfare. Moreover, the improvement in welfare accelerates as fiscal consolidation progresses more rapidly. Last, we also discuss and derive the optimal long-run debt-to-GDP ratio.


2008 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 172-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
GUSTAVO A. MARRERO

One part of the literature on endogenous growth concerns models where public infrastructure affects the private production process. An unsolved puzzle in this literature concerns observed public investment-to-output ratios for developed economies, which tend to fall short of theoretical model-based optimal ratios. We reexamine the optimal choice of public investment in a more general framework. This setting allows for long-lasting capital stocks, a lower depreciation rate for public capital than for private capital, an elasticity of intertemporal substitution that differs from unity, and the need to finance a nontrivial share of public services in output. Given other fundamentals in the economy, we show that the optimal public investment-to-output ratio is smaller for low-growth economies, for economies populated by consumers with low preferences for substituting consumption intertemporally, and when public capital is durable. For a calibrated economy, we show that a combination of these factors solves the public investment puzzle.


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