关键词: 公共资本 , 经济增长 , 公共投资规则

Abstract: The theoretical literature on the link between public capital and economic growth has boomed in recent years. By providing a general framework this paper unifies the work of the various economistsin this area to show how the theory develops. First in a basic model it explores the fundamental questions that the researchers mostly care about, including the growth and welfare maximizing fiscal rules and the optimal and equilibrium transition paths. Then in extended models it relaxes the assumptions of the basic model, one by one, to see if the core results still hold. That is, we test the results when public capital is congested rather than nonrival, its deprecation is endogenous rather than exogenous, both the flow and the stock of public investment rather than the stock alone affect private production, and public investment is carried out by two levels of governments rather than only one. Finally after presenting a comparison of the results for the various assumptions, this paper further discusses several challenges to the theory development and then proposes three possible directions for future research.

Key words: public capital , economic growth , rule for public investment