ECIN Replication Package for "Interdependence of government expenditure among European countries: Productivity spillover and strategic interaction"

We
build an endogenous growth model that distinguishes productive and welfare
government expenditures and embeds fiscal externalities. The model yields three
testable hypotheses: (i) productive expenditure raises growth (Barro effect);
(ii) productive expenditure generates cross-country productivity spillovers;
(iii) government expenditure structure exhibits spatial dependence. Estimation
with a spatial-panel dataset for 30 European economies (EU27+3) corroborates
all three hypotheses. We further show that positive productivity externalities
induce an international free-rider problem, causing systematic under-investment
in productive expenditure, while negative welfare externalities trigger a
“welfare tournament” and over-spending on non-productive expenditure.

我们构建了一个区分生产性与福利性政府支出的内生增长模型，并嵌入了财政外部性。该模型推导出三项可检验假说：其一，生产性支出可拉动经济增长（巴罗效应(Barro effect)）；其二，生产性支出会产生跨国生产率溢出效应；其三，政府支出结构呈现空间相关性。我们采用涵盖30个欧洲经济体（EU27+3）的空间面板数据集开展实证估计，结果证实了上述三项假说。我们进一步证明，正向生产率外部性会引发国际搭便车问题，导致生产性支出出现系统性投资不足；而负向福利外部性则会催生“福利锦标赛”现象，引发非生产性支出的过度扩张。