Government Revenues and Expenditures

 Note to Self: IMF DataMapper users the following definitions for public revenues and expenditures.

General government revenue (National currency)
Revenue consists of taxes, social contributions, grants receivable, and other revenue. Revenue increases government’s net worth, which is the difference between its assets and liabilities (GFSM 2001, paragraph 4.20). Note: Transactions that merely change the composition of the balance sheet do not change the net worth position, for example, proceeds from sales of nonfinancial and financial assets or incurrence of liabilities.

General government total expenditure (National currency)
Total expenditure consists of total expense and the net acquisition of nonfinancial assets. Note: Apart from being on an accrual basis, total expenditure differs from the GFSM 1986 definition of total expenditure in the sense that it also takes the disposals of nonfinancial assets into account.

What's the quickest way to find public finance data on the web?

So whats the quickest way to find International Public Finance data on the web? Is it
A- Wolfram Alpha
B- World Development Indicators
C- IMF Data Mapper

Homework: Try finding the latest estimates of Bhutan's government revenues estimates?

Chart of the Day- G spot in the GDP

Stumbling and Mumbling has an interesting post;

There are three “headline” measures of government activity, which my chart shows.
One is the output of government services - health, defence, education etc - which shows up within the output measure of GDP.
Another is government consumption, which comes in the expenditure measure of GDP.
And a third is overall central government current spending, which is reported in table PSF3 of the public finances; in my chart, I’ve deflated this by the GDP deflator.
And here’s the queer thing. The correlation between annual changes in these three measures is low; no higher than 0.26 since 1984Q1.
How come? One reason is that central government spending includes debt interest and welfare payments, which the other two don’t.
Another reason is that government consumption includes spending on procurement which is excluded from output.

Related;
Public Service Output, Input and Productivity: Healthcare
Public Service Output, Input and Productivity: Education