ABSTRACT
There has been a great increase in recent decades in public expenditure in all capitalist countries, both in total and as a proportion of the national product. There have been a number of reasons behind the move towards more medium- and long-term planning of public expenditure in Britain. First, there is the feeling that too much chopping and changing of public investment not only leads to waste but has a damaging effect on business confidence as well. Secondly, there is the motive of co-ordination. In France the authorities accepted from the outset that the planned development of public expenditure must be the basis of any national plan for growth. Productive public investment and current expenditure were more severely restricted and again, in line with the planners' wishes, private consumption suffered most of all. The three countries under study differ considerably in their attitudes to the total level of public expenditure.
