No abstract

The literature on fiscal policies is paying increasing attention to the impact of the composition of public expenditures on long‐term economic growth. Public policy endogenous growth models recommend to change the composition of public expenditures to items considered productive expenditures. In this sense, European institutions are encouraging the rise in the share of productive outlays like public investments, R&D, and active labor market policies, among others. The article analyzes whether these recommendations are followed by European Union countries and whether a convergence to a new pattern of public finances with a higher share of those items considered productive expenditures by European institutions is arising.

No abstract

Although a key condition for the creation of a monetary union is the existence of similar structural characteristics that reduce the existence and incidence of asymmetric shocks, in the case of the Eurozone, most, if not all, studies have emphasized the existence of sizeable divergences both in the macroeconomic performances and in the structural elements of the Eurozone countries. The objective of the paper is to analyse whether the economic and financial crisis that is affecting the Eurozone since the year 2008 has had any impact of the coherence of the Eurozone, that is, whether after 2008 the differences in the macroeconomic performance of the euro counties are declining (convergence) or increasing (divergence).

The objective of the paper is to test the existence of a relationship between the composition of public expenditures and the macroeconomic outcomes (GDP rate of growth, and unemployment and inflation rates) of the European Union member states during the period 1995-2007. We study the existence of clusters of countries with similar structures of public expenditure using multiple factorial analysis and principal component analysis techniques, and we compare the macroeconomic outcomes of the clusters obtained using statistics test of equality of means. The outcomes show that there is no evidence of the existence of a relationship between the structures of the public expenditure and the macroeconomic performances. This leads us to conclude that there is no single optimum model of public spending that warrants the best macroeconomic performance.