Public Expenditure and National Income: Time Series Evidence from Greece

The paper investigates the existence and nature of long run relationships between Greek national income and four categories of public expenditure.Our results suggest that there exists a positive long-run relationship between GDP on the one hand; and public expenditure and "productive" public consumption on the other, with causality running both ways. There appears to be no long-run relationship between GDP ans public-sector personnel expenditure; and GDP and public-debt service expenditure.From that point of view, it would appear that in terms of output growth, the fiscal policy followed by Greece during the 1975-1990 period has rather been ineffective