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The Dynamic Effects of Public Capital: VAR Evidence for 22 OECD Countries

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  • Kamps, Christophe

Abstract

The issue of whether government capital is productive has received a great deal of recent attention. Yet, empirical analyses of public capital productivity have been limited to a small sample of countries for which official capital stock estimates are available. Building on a new database that provides internationally comparable capital stock estimates, this paper estimates the dynamic effects of public capital using the vector autoregressive (VAR) methodology for a large set of OECD countries. The empirical results suggest that there is evidence for positive output effects of public capital in OECD countries, but hardly any evidence for positive employment effects.

Suggested Citation

  • Kamps, Christophe, 2004. "The Dynamic Effects of Public Capital: VAR Evidence for 22 OECD Countries," Kiel Working Papers 1224, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:ifwkwp:1224
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Public capital; VAR model; Cointegration; OECD countries;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E60 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - General
    • H54 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Infrastructures
    • C32 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes; State Space Models

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