Spending Smarter: How Efficient and Well-Allocated Public Spending Can Boost Economic Growth
Fiscal Monitor, October 2025
Source details
- Canonical URL
- Spending Smarter: How Efficient and Well-Allocated Public Spending Can Boost Economic Growth
Other formats
Bibliographic details
- Authors: Vitor Gaspar Read
- Published: October 15, 2025
Key findings
- Redirecting public spending toward infrastructure, education, health, and research and development, without increasing overall spending, can deliver significant long-term gains in output.
- Closing gaps in spending efficiency can further magnify these gains.
- Institution-building is identified as the most effective strategy to improve spending efficiency.
- The analysis provides new global and time-varying datasets of public spending efficiency and rigidity.
Analytical focus
- Examines how governments can improve economic growth prospects by enhancing the efficiency and composition of public spending while keeping the overall spending envelope unchanged.
- Emphasizes composition shifts (infrastructure, education, health, research and development) rather than increases in total spending.
- Highlights the role of efficiency gaps and institutional reforms in amplifying growth returns to spending.
Data and methodological contributions
- Introduces new global and time-varying datasets of public spending efficiency and rigidity.
Engagements and dissemination
- Press briefing speakers:
- Vitor Gaspar, Director, Fiscal Affairs Department, IMF
- Era Dabla-Norris, Deputy Director, Fiscal Affairs Department, IMF
- Davide Furceri, Division Chief, Fiscal Affairs Department, IMF
- Moderator: Tatiana Mossot, Senior Communications Officer, IMF
- Panel discussion at the Center for Strategic and International Studies: The Fiscal Monitor event starts @ 1:03:04 time stamp
- Speakers: Arthur Asiimwe, Deputy Chief of Mission, Embassy of Rwanda; Shanta Devarajan, Professor of International Development, Georgetown University; Pjer Šimunović, Ambassador of Croatia to the United States
- Moderator: Philip Luck, Director, Economics Program, Center for Strategic and International Studies
Publication
- Fiscal Monitor — Spending Smarter, October 2025
Source: Fiscal Monitor — Spending Smarter (October 2025).
Content in this bundle
- 2025octfiscalmonitordatabase
- Dataset overview
- Chapter 1
- Chapter 1 Online Annex
- Executive Summary
- Press Briefing: Fiscal Monitor Presentation; october 2025
- Foreword
- Introductory Remarks at the Press Conference - Fiscal Monitor; October 2025
- msa
- Preface
- Full Report