Public spending patterns: The regional distribution of public investment in Greece

Abstract

The spatial dispersion of public investment constitutes one of the principal elements and also one of the key issues concerning the country's strategic regional development. It is evident that public investment expenditure represents in part the 'social wage' citizens receive, while at the same time it generates external economies for the productive sectors of the economy. Using a dataset that includes total outlays by all central, regional and local authorities, this chapter traces the distribution of public investment in Greek prefectures (NUTS III spatial level) over the period 1976-2005. It seeks to highlight the spending pattern governments of that period followed, to compare the changes (if any) between different periods, and to try to explain whether redistribution of national wealth or other factors such as political ones could be held as sufficient evidence for explaining the pattern and its temporal changes.