The Impact of Ethnic Heterogeneityon the Quantity and Quality of Public Spending

Louis Kuijs

No 2000/049, IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund

Abstract: The paper investigates empirically the impact of ethnic heterogeneity on the amount of public spending on health and education and the quality, or “technical efficiency” of spending. While it finds partial evidence for the claim that more heterogeneous societies spend less on public goods, it suggests that heterogeneity significantly affects the efficiency of public expenditure outcomes in terms of social indicators. The results suggest that the impact of heterogeneity on public expenditure outcomes is not just a public choice problem, but also an issue of “technical efficiency.”

Keywords: WP; public spending; GDP; government spending; society; public goods; ethnic heterogeneity; GDP ratio; public expenditure outcome; policy choice; spending regression; heterogeneous society; public health expenditure outcome; Health care spending; Education spending; Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 20
Date: 2000-03-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=3488 (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:2000/049

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 ().