Government spending or expenditure includes all government consumption, investment, and transfer payments.[1][2] In national income accounting, the acquisition by governments of goods and services for current use, to directly satisfy the individual or collective needs of the community, is classed as government final consumption expenditure. Government acquisition of goods and services intended to create future benefits, such as infrastructure investment or research spending, is classed as government investment (government gross capital formation). These two types of government spending, on final consumption and on gross capital formation, together constitute one of the major components of gross domestic product.
Spending by a government that issues its own currency is nominally self-financing.[3] However, under a full employment assumption, to acquire resources produced by its population without potential inflationary pressures, removal of purchasing power must occur via government borrowing, taxes, custom duties, the sale or lease of natural resources, and various fees like national park entry fees or licensing fees.[4] When these sovereign governments choose to temporarily remove spent money by issuing securities in its place, they pay interest on the money borrowed.[5] Changes in government spending are a major component of fiscal policy used to stabilize the macroeconomic business cycle.
Public expenditure is spending made by the government of a country on collective or individual needs and wants of public goods and public services, such as pension, healthcare, security, education subsidies, emergency services, infrastructure, etc.[6] Until the 19th century, public expenditure was limited due to laissez faire philosophies. In the 20th century, John Maynard Keynes argued that the role of public expenditure was pivotal in determining levels of income and distribution in the economy. Public expenditure plays an important role in the economy as it establishes fiscal policy and provides public goods and services for households and firms.
Several theories of taxation exist in public economics. Governments can be separated into two distinct types when it comes to their fiscal and monetary sovereignty: currency-issuers and currency-users. Currency-users at all levels (national, regional and local) need to raise revenue from a variety of sources to finance public-sector expenditures. They are not in control of the currency that their jurisdiction transacts in and so are restricted by what revenue they can raise prior to executing spending policies. Currency-issuing governments have no such nominal fiscal restriction. They have an infinite fiscal capacity in that, in principle, they can issue as much of their own currency as they like. However, real resources and productive capacity within an economy are finite. It is the acquisition of these real resources for the public purpose and a non-inflationary bias in government policy-making that places the constraint on currency-issuing government spending, rather than nominal financing from prior revenue collection.
The details of taxation are guided by two principles: who will benefit, and who can pay. Public expenditure means the expenditure on the developmental and non-developmental activity such as construction of roadways and dams, and other activity.
Rules or principles that govern the expenditure policy of the government are called "canons of public expenditure". Economist George Findlay Shirras[7] laid down the following four canons of public expenditure, although some are understood not to be required:
Three other canons are:
The criteria and pre-conditions for arriving at this solution are collectively referred to as the principle of maximum social advantage. Taxation (government revenue) and government expenditure are the two tools. Neither of excess is good for the society, it has to be balanced to achieve maximum social benefit. Dalton called this principle as "Maximum Social Advantage" and Pigou termed it as "Maximum Aggregate Welfare".
Dalton's Principle of Maximum Social Advantage – maximum satisfaction should be yield by striking a balance between public revenue and expenditure by the government. Economic welfare is achieved when marginal utility of expenditure = marginal disutility of taxation. He explains this principle with reference to
It was introduced by Swedish Economist "Erik Lindahl in 1919".[11] According to his theory, determination of public expenditure and taxation will happen on the basis of public preferences which they will reveal themselves. Cost of supplying a good will be taken up by the people. The tax that they will pay will be revealed by them according to their capacities.[12]
Government spending can be a useful economic policy tool for governments. Fiscal policy can be defined as the use of government spending and/or taxation as a mechanism to influence an economy.[13][14] There are two types of fiscal policy: expansionary fiscal policy, and contractionary fiscal policy. Expansionary fiscal policy is an increase in government spending or a decrease in taxation, while contractionary fiscal policy is a decrease in government spending or an increase in taxes. Expansionary fiscal policy can be used by governments to stimulate the economy during a recession. For example, an increase in government spending directly increases demand for goods and services, which can help increase output and employment. On the other hand, contractionary fiscal policy can be used by governments to cool down the economy during an economic boom. A decrease in government spending or an increase in taxes can help reduce inflationary pressures within the economy.[13] During economic downturns, in the short run, government spending can be changed either via automatic stabilization or discretionary stabilization. Automatic stabilization is when existing policies automatically change government spending or taxes in response to economic changes, without the additional passage of laws.[15][13] A primary example of an automatic stabilizer is unemployment insurance or an employment guarantee, which provide financial assistance to unemployed workers or direct wages to recently unemployed workers, respectively. Discretionary stabilization is when a government takes actions to change government spending or taxes in direct response to changes in the economy. For instance, a government may decide to increase government spending as a result of a recession.[15] With discretionary stabilization, most governments must pass a new law to make changes in government spending.[13]
John Maynard Keynes was one of the first economists to advocate for government deficit spending as part of the fiscal policy response to an economic contraction. According to Keynesian economics, increased government spending raises aggregate demand and increases consumption, which leads to increased production and faster recovery from recessions. Classical economists, on the other hand, believe that increased government spending exacerbates an economic contraction by shifting resources from the private sector, which they consider productive, to the public sector, which they consider unproductive.[16]
In economics, the potential "shifting" in resources from the private sector to the public sector as a result of an increase in government deficit spending is called crowding out.[13] The figure to the right depicts an outdated theory for the market for capital, otherwise known as the market for loanable funds. The downward sloping demand curve D1 represents demand for private capital by firms and investors, and the upward sloping supply curve S1 represents savings by private individuals. The initial equilibrium in this market is represented by point A, where the equilibrium quantity of capital is K1 and the equilibrium interest rate is R1. In this theory, if the government increases deficit spending, it will borrow money from the private capital market and reduce the supply of savings to S2. The new equilibrium is at point B, where the interest rate has increased to R2 and the quantity of capital available to the private sector has decreased to K2. The government has essentially made borrowing more expensive and has taken away savings from the market, which "crowds out" some private investment. The crowding out of private investment could limit the economic growth from the initial increase in government spending.[15][14]
A closer understanding of government fiscal operations contradicts the above loanable funds theory. In fact, in the first instance and all else equal, increased government deficit spending increases liquidity in the banking system, thereby pushing down on interest rates. Government borrowing is the act of swapping the excess bank reserves created via the increased deficit spending with Treasury securities, thus draining this excess liquidity back down to pre-spending levels. There is no "loanable funds" pool of currency in reality. Crowding out only refers to the shift of real resources from private to public use, not the crowding out of nominal private investment. Government deficit spending increases the net financial assets available to the non-government sector.[17][18]
Public expenditure can be divided into COFOG (Classification of the Functions of Government) categories. Those categories are:
Government spending on goods and services for current use to directly satisfy individual or collective needs of the members of the community is called government final consumption expenditure (GFCE) It is a purchase from the national accounts "use of income account" for goods and services directly satisfying of individual needs (individual consumption) or collective needs of members of the community (collective consumption). GFCE consists of the value of the goods and services produced by the government itself other than own-account capital formation and sales and of purchases by the government of goods and services produced by market producers that are supplied to households—without any transformation—as "social transfers" in kind.[20]
Government spending or government expenditure can be divided into three primary groups, government consumption, transfer payments, and interest payments.[21]
Stated reasons for Defense spending include deterrence[23] and active military operations.[24] Factors of recent defense spending increases include Russian invasion of Ukraine and related deteriorating security situation.[24]The countries with highest total military spending are USA and China, and the countries with highest military spending as percentage of GDP in 2023 among top 20 military spenders are Ukraine, Algeria, Saudi Arabia and Russia.[25] Top 20 countries with the highest military spending 2023, where the values for China, Russia and Saudi Arabia are estimated:[25]