We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
from Part II - Value for Money
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 October 2020
How ‘big’ should government be? How much lower can public spending be, if countries still want to be amongst the better or even best performers? A pragmatic ‘optimum’ for the size of government, something that is realistic and reachable, is normally not more than 30–35% or perhaps 40% of GDP. This is the spending ratio of top-scoring countries, such as Switzerland and Australia, and they do well on their core tasks. Ireland and Singapore do so with even lower spending. This implies a lot of room for expenditure savings in many countries, given a total average of almost 44% and highest spending above 56% of GDP. ‘Big spenders’ with a poor performance and an uneven income distribution can gain in particular from cutting the size of the state. There is also a group of countries, with high spending and good performance, such as the Nordic countries. For these, the picture for the optimal size of government is nuanced. Experience nonetheless shows that comprehensive reform can make a big difference to performance and efficiency everywhere.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
