In most less developed countries (LDCs), the public sector's role in the planning and implementation of development projects has been considerable. The rising level of public expenditure has been fueled by capital inflows from public and private sources abroad, and by the mobilization of domestic resources through taxation and local borrowing. Recently, the effectiveness of the government's development efforts have been cast in doubt. Critics argue that foreign capital inflows have resulted in increased public or private consumption rather than increased investment, and have contributed less to growth than was anticipated.'Others suggest that the higher tax burden has been squandered on nonproductive forms of public consumption (see Stanley Please (1967, 1972) and L. Krishnamurty).

In this paper, I shall examine these is-sues by developing a cross-section time-series econometric model of the public sec-tor of eleven African countries (Nigeria, Ghana, Zambia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, Liberia, Ethiopia, Tunisia, and Morocco). Nine of these are Englishspeaking or" Anglophone," and seven were