Expenditures, Public -- Government spending policy

Indeks : p. 273-291 ; p. 254-271 ; This book discusses the changing role of government finance in the 20th century. It documents the enormous increase in government spending in that century across all industrialized countries. The authors find that the growth of government spending over the past 35 years has not brought about much additional social and economic welfare. This suggests that public spending in industrialized countries could be much smaller than it is without sacrificing important policy objectives. For this happen, governments need to refocus their role on setting the rules of the game. The study provides options for institutional and expenditure policy reform. This exercise inevitably led to the related question of what kind of societies and, more specially, what level of public spending the industrial countries had had before some of them became welfare state.