In the scientific literature, there are two opposing views on the relationship between public expenditure and economic growth. The Keynesian view states that public expenditure is an exogenous factor that influences economic growth and can be used as a policy instrument. This point of view is in contrast to the Wagner view that the public expenditure is seen as an endogenous factor or an outcome, not a cause, of economic growth. The primary objective of this study is to test the views of Keynes’s versus Wagner’s in the case of Kosovo by using Public Expenditure (G), Gross Domestic Product and three other components of GDP: Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), Export (EXP) and Total Budget Revenue (TRtax); the variables used in this analysis are quarterly time series data spanning from 2004–2016. To accomplish the set objectives, the Johansen co-integrated technique is used to investigate the long-run relationship between public expenditure and economic growth, while the Granger causality test is used to know the direction of flow between variables. This study discovers that there is a unidirectional causality between government expenditures and economic growth in Kosovo. It is also found that there is a bidirectional causality between total budget revenue and public expenditure. On the other hand, results also provide evidence that there is a bidirectional causality between export and economic growth. Moreover, the results for Kosovo indicate that data for the period considered support the Keynesian view.

The aim of the study is to examine the impact of public expenditure on economic growth of Kosovo. Time series data span for the period of time 2002-2015. The structure of the econometric model is built on Keynesian theories and endogenous growth model. The model estimation is performed only after implementing the Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) Unit Root test to estimate if time series are stationary. Several tests have been implemented to determine model validity. The model has met all the assumptions of statistical tests: error term residuals have a normal distribution (Jarque-Bera test), there is no auto-correlation between variables (Breusch-Godfrey Serial test), and error variances are constant, known as the principle of homoscedasticity (Breusch-Pagan-Godfrey test). Gross domestic product is used as a dependent variable in the model, while public expenditure (G), foreign direct investment (FDI), export (EXP) and total budget revenue (TrTax) are used as the endogenous variables. The study results have revealed that there is a positive and statistically significant effect of public expenditures and exports on economic growth. Total budget revenue has a positive impact on economic growth but this has not been proved to be statistically significant. The authors of the research have also found out that FDI is negative and statistically insignificant.

This paper evaluates the performance and efficiency of the government public expenditure in the education and health sectors in the emerging economies context, specifically comparing Kosovo with the Western Balkan countries. The indicators of education and health sectors were used to assess a Public Sector Performance Index (PSP) and the Public Sector Efficiency Index (PSE). Also, this study uses the nonparametric method DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) to evaluate the input-output oriented efficiency. This study finds that education score of performance ranges from 0.43 which is the minimum to 1.48 which is the maximum. And in the health sector, the PSP score ranges from 0.81 which is the minimum to 1.09 which is the maximum. Kosovo ranks 41st out of 42 countries in this sample, in terms of the education sector, with a performance index of 0.67, which is 37% below the average of 1.00, whilst in terms of the health sector it ranks 39th out of 42 countries in the sample.In the analysis of the input output efficiency model in the education sector, the results show that the countries included in the study achieve an efficiency of 76.69 and it means that countries can reduce relevant public expenditure by 23.3% and maintain the same level of PSP in the education sector. Kosovo is assessed in this analysis as an inefficient country. The value of the input-oriented index is 40.24, which means that Kosovo can achieve the same level of performance in the education sector by using 60% less relative public expenditure, whilst, on the other hand, the input-output efficiency results for the health sector show that the efficiency score for countries is 47.64, and denotes that the countries in the sample could reduce 53% in health expenditure to achieve the same performance in the health sector. Thus, Kosovo compared to other countries in the sample is within the limits of production opportunities and uses public expenditure on health and education inefficiently.