The Distributional Effects of Public Expenditure: Update and Overview

Teresa Ter-Minassian and Gerd Schwartz

No 1995/084, IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund

Abstract: It is commonly agreed that economic policies, including budgetary policies, can have potentially strong distributional effects. Traditional economic analysis held that economic policies affected the income distribution primarily through their impact on the rate of growth. More recently, it has come to be recognized that qualitative aspects of economic growth are probably more important than the rate of growth itself. While recent research has confirmed the potential role of expenditure policies as a redistributive tool, it has also shown that redistribution does not necessarily have to come at the expense of economic growth and efficiency. Although there are substantial analytical and technical problems to be faced in the design of equitable and cost-effective public expenditure programs, unfavorable distributional outcomes of these programs can usually be traced more to political and institutional pressures than to purely technical factors.

Keywords: WP; income; public expenditure; economic growth; policy; public expenditure program; expenditure policy; household income; household expenditure data; public expenditure area; expenditure reform; debated policy topic; income distribution data; distribution data; expenditure program; income transfer; expenditure incidence; Income distribution; Personal income; Income inequality; East Asia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28
Date: 1995-08-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=1278 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:imf:imfwpa:1995/084

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/pubs/ord_info.htm

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Akshay Modi ().