Explaining public investment in Western Europe
Explaining public investment in Western Europe
复制标题
解释西欧的公共投资
DOI：
10.1080/00036840701736180
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发表时间：
2010
影响因子：
2.2
通讯作者：
Stijn Caekelbergh
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
J. Vuchelen;Stijn Caekelbergh
预算整合被认为是过去三十年大多数西欧国家公共投资下降的明显原因。然而，基于预算变量的回归往往会高估 1990 年后时期（即预算压力缓解时）的公共投资。我们用行为经济学的思想补充公共投资的预算整合方法，以解释为什么当有额外的预算资源可用时这些投资不会增加。我们使用峰/终评估程序来捕捉随着政府消费支出削减的积累选民的挫败感。预算整合的这种“记忆效应”意味着选民会回想起之前政府消费支出的峰值。只要当前支出低于峰值，他们就会继续不满。当预算状况改善时，政策制定者将选择增加政府消费，因为这在选举上更有利可图。因此，当实施预算合并时，公共投资将会下降，而当出现额外的预算资源时，公共投资将保持不变。我们通过在公共投资回归中引入支出缺口来测试记忆效应。这些差距等于先前观察到的最高初级政府消费占国内生产总值（GDP）的比率与当前比率之间的差异。大多数欧盟国家的回归结果支持我们的假设。
Budgetary consolidations are considered the obvious explanation for the decline in public investment that most Western European countries experienced over the past three decades. However, regressions based on budgetary variables tend to overpredict public investment during the post-1990 period, i.e. when the budgetary stress eased. We supplement the budgetary consolidation approach to public investment with ideas from behavioural economics to explain why these investments do not increase when additional budgetary resources are available. We use the peak/end evaluation procedure to capture the frustration of voters as cuts in government consumption expenditures accumulate. This ‘memory-effect’ of budgetary consolidations implies that voters recall the previous peak in government consumption expenditures. They remain discontent as long as current expenditures are below the peak value. When the budgetary situation improves, policy makers will choose to increase government consumption because this is electorally more rewarding. Public investment will thus decline when budgetary consolidations are imposed and will remain constant when additional budgetary resources emerge. We test for a memory-effect by introducing expenditure gaps in public investment regressions. These gaps equal the difference between the highest previously observed primary government consumption to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) ratio and the current ratio. The regression results for most EU countries support our assumption.