1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910970282203321

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

9781475575972

1475575971

9781475523492

1475523491

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (22 p.)

Collana

IMF Working Papers

Altri autori (Persone)

LeyEduardo

Disciplina

332.1/52

Soggetti

Cost and standard of living

Economic development

Civil service & public sector

Economic sectors

Education

Education: General

Environmental Accounts

Expenditure

Expenditures, Public

Finance, Public

General Aggregative Models: General

Health care spending

Health economics

Health

Health: General

Macroeconomics

Measurement and Data on National Income and Product Accounts and Wealth

National accounts

National Government Expenditures and Health

National income

Public Administration

Public Enterprises

Public finance & taxation

Public Finance

Public Sector Accounting and Audits

Public sector



Public-Private Enterprises

Publicly Provided Goods: General

Social Security and Public Pensions

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.