Growth effects of government expenditure and taxation in rich countries

• A number of cross-country comparisons do not find a robust negative relationship between government size and economic growth, In part, this may reflect the prediction in economic theory that a negative relationship should exist primarily for rich countries with large public sectors. In this paper an econometric panel study is conducted on a sample of rich countries covering the 1970-1995 period. Extended extreme bounds analyses are reported based on a regression model that tackles a number of econometric issues. Our general finding is that the more the econometric problems are addressed, the more robust the relationship between government size and economic growth appears. Our most complete specifications are robust even according to the stringent extreme bounds criterion.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv -- Nationalekonomi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business -- Economics (hsv//eng)

Keyword

economic growth

extreme bounds analysis

fiscal policy

government expenditure

public sector

taxation

cross-country regressions

panel regressions

robustness test

consistent covariance-matrix

long-run growth

economic-growth

fiscal-policy

heteroskedasticity

regressions

empirics

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)