1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910786480403321

Autore

Grigoli Francesco

Titolo

Quality of Government and Living Standards : : Adjusting for the Efficiency of Public Spending / / Francesco Grigoli, Eduardo Ley

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Washington, D.C. : , : International Monetary Fund, , 2012

ISBN

1-4755-7597-1

1-4755-2349-1

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (22 p.)

Collana

IMF Working Papers

Altri autori (Persone)

LeyEduardo

Soggetti

Cost and standard of living

Economic development

Macroeconomics

Public Finance

Measurement and Data on National Income and Product Accounts and Wealth

Environmental Accounts

Publicly Provided Goods: General

Public Administration

Public Sector Accounting and Audits

Social Security and Public Pensions

Health: General

Public Enterprises

Public-Private Enterprises

Education: General

General Aggregative Models: General

National Government Expenditures and Health

Health economics

Civil service & public sector

Education

Public finance & taxation

Health

Public sector

National accounts

Health care spending

Economic sectors

Expenditure

Finance, Public

National income



Expenditures, Public

Cyprus

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references.

Nota di contenuto

Cover; Abstract; Contents; I. Introduction; II. Measuring Living Standards; III. Corrected GDP; Tables; 1. GDP Losses Associated with Wasted Public Resources; Figures; 1. GDP Loss Due to Health and Education Waste vs. Per Capita GDP; 2. GDP Loss Due to Health Waste vs. Per Capita GDP; 3. Technical Efficiency Scores, per Capita GDP, and Total Loss; 4. Technical Efficiency Scores, WGI's Government Effectiveness, GDP Loss Due to Health Waste, and Per Capita GDP; IV. Concluding Remarks; References

Sommario/riassunto

It is generally acknowledged that the government’s output is difficult to define and its value is hard to measure. The practical solution, adopted by national accounts systems, is to equate output to input costs. However, several studies estimate significant inefficiencies in government activities (i.e., same output could be achieved with less inputs), implying that inputs are not a good approximation for outputs. If taken seriously, the next logical step is to purge from GDP the fraction of government inputs that is wasted. As differences in the quality of the public sector have a direct impact on citizens’ effective consumption of public and private goods and services, we must take them into account when computing a measure of living standards. We illustrate such a correction computing corrected per capita GDPs on the basis of two studies that estimate efficiency scores for several dimensions of government activities. We show that the correction could be significant, and rankings of living standards could be re-ordered as a result.