Juan González Alegre

University of Malaga | UMA

Within the framework of the soft budget constraint problem, this article investigates the impact of a legislative reform that increased regional tax autonomy on the propensity of Spanish regional governments to incur a deficit. For this purpose, a dynamic panel data model is estimated, using data for the period 1984–2019. The sample shows a breakpo...

Some macroeconomic dimensions like the economic business cycle, the exchange rate movements when the degree of country openness is significant, or the level of inflation are often considered to explain measured-inflation dynamics. However, inflation volatility may also be affected by statistical agencies methodological changes. This paper explores both...

This paper evaluates the efficiency of Active Labour Market Policies (ALMPs) in the European Union (EU). The paper first reviews the main trends governing the evolution of the European Social Fund (ESF) since its creation. The ESF promotes public expenditure in ALMPs in order to foster social cohesion across the EU. In order to test to what extent...

Active labour market policies and the efficiency of the European Social Fund in Spanish regions. Regional Studies. This paper estimates the determinants of public expenditure on active labour market policies (ALMPs) at the regional level using panel data from a sample of the 17 Spanish regions (1989–2010). The estimations take into account endogene...

González Alegre J. Decentralization and the composition of public expenditure in Spain, Regional Studies. This paper examines the effects of fiscal decentralization on the economic distribution of public expenditures. Using panel data from the seventeen Spanish regions (1984–2003), it is shown that fiscal decentralization is a crucial determinant o...

Most of the Structural Actions are designed as an incentive to increase public investment in less-developed areas. However, we suspect that the efficiency of the policy is related to the level of fiscal autonomy of the subsidized government. In this paper we construct a paned data model in order to estimate the role of fiscal federalism on the effe...

The paper examines consolidation episodes in the EU since 1970 with a view to shedding light on the factors that determine the success or failure of fiscal adjustment. Compared to the existing literature on successful fiscal consolidations we add a number of new dimensions. Two deserve particular attention. Firstly, we explore a broader set of pote...

We set out to decompose government investment, seeking especially to estimate how much governments in Europe invest in infrastructure in general and transport infrastructure in particular. It is concluded that infrastructure accounts for about one-third of overall government investment in the EU on average, with the share of transport investment as...

In this paper we test whether a reallocation of government budget items can enhance long-term GDP growth in a set of European countries. We apply modern panel data techniques to the period 1970-2006, and we use three alternative dependent variables in a growth regression: economic growth, total factor productivity and labour productivity. Our resul...

Motivated by the lack of success of previous studies trying to estimate the impact of the European Cohesion Policy, this paper brings an unexplored issue to light: transfers that are intended to finance public investment in key areas for growth might be crowded-out by subsidized governments to alternative uses. In fact, using annual data from fifte...