This paper assesses the growth-enhancing and growth-retarding effects of different budgetary fiscal variables using a balanced panel of 32 middle-income countries for the time period of 2000–2017. Much of previous research requires to be re-evaluated as it ignores the biases associated with either incomplete or wrong specification, or both, of the budget constraint and the money supply. This paper addresses these gaps and obtains more unbiased, consistent, and efficient estimates for the fiscal variables, using both static and dynamic panel econometric techniques. Specifically, this paper finds that (1) larger tax and non-tax revenues limit economic growth; (2) higher allocation to public capital expenditure appears to have positive and significant effects on growth; (3) fiscal deficit appears to have neutral-growth effects; and (4) controlling broad money supply corrects for biases in the orthogonal specification.
Authors: Rahman, Sultan Hafeez; Siddiquee; Muhammad Shahadat Hossain
Type: Journal article
Year: 2023
