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Purpose: This study forecasts the government expenditure components in Nigeria, including recurrent and capital expenditures for 2021 and 2022, based on data from 1981 to 2020. Design/methodology/approach: The study employs statistical/econometric problems using the Feasible Quasi Generalized Least Squares approach. Expenditure forecasts involve three simulation scenarios: (1) do nothing where the economy follows its natural path; (2) an optimistic scenario, where the economy grows by specific percentages and (3) a pessimistic scenario that defines specific economic contractions. Findings: The estimation model is informed by Wagner's law specifying a positive link between economic activities and public spending. Model estimation affirms the expected positive relationship and is relevant for generating forecasts. The out-of-sample results show that a higher proportion of the total government expenditure (7.6% in 2021 and 15.6% in 2022) is required to achieve a predefined growth target (5%). Originality/value: This study offers empirical evidence that specifically requires Nigeria to invest a ratio of 3 to 1 or more in capital expenditure to recurrent expenditure for the economy to be guided on growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Economic Research & Business Administration is the property of Al-Farabi Kazakh National University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article explores the connection between government budget expenditures and economic growth in Uzbekistan. It analyzes various theoretical perspectives and empirical studies on the topic, which have produced mixed results. To contribute to the understanding of this relationship in Uzbekistan, the study applies statistical analysis using the Engle-Granger Cointegration model and the Granger causality test models. The findings reveal a positive and significant correlation between government spending and GDP, indicating that increased government expenditures can contribute to economic growth. These results align with the principles of Keynesian economics and Wagner's Law. It is important to consider the country's specific context and policies when interpreting these findings. [Extracted from the article]

Copyright of Afyon Kocatepe University Journal of Social Sciences / Afyon Kocatepe Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi is the property of Afyon Kocatepe University (AKU) Sosyal Bilimler Enstitusu and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

We examine the association between economic development and two measures of public spending on education: the "national effort" (public spending on education as a proportion of GDP) and "budget share" (public spending on education as a proportion of total government spending). Using panel data for a large sample of countries from 1989 to 2015, we compare mean levels of national effort and budget share measures for economically and politically distinct groups of countries. We find that economically more developed (richer) countries are characterised by a higher national effort and a lower budget share than less economically developed countries. This implies that richer countries, on average, have larger public sectors than poorer countries, consistent with Wagner's law and Baumol's "cost disease" hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the determinants and interrelationship of components of government spending using data for up to 142 countries over the period 1990–2017. We make use of two‐way fixed effect estimator with Driscoll‐Kraay standard errors, which accounts for cross‐sectional dependence and a system generalized method of moments estimator to examine the determinants of components of spending. We then adopt the seemingly unrelated regression estimation technique to examine the interrelationship between government spending types. From our results, there is little evidence of Wagner's Law as the coefficient of income is negative and statistically significant for most measures of spending. Further, we find that a reduction in overall government spending tends to reduce the share of almost all components of government spending except spending on economic services, non‐productive spending, and spending on transfers. In examining the interrelationship between government spending types, we find that government spending types under the Classification of Functions of Government (COFOG) classification, which may be described as "pure public goods" and "merit public good provision," have complementary relationships. However, government spending on pure public good vs merit public goods, pure public goods vs economic services, and pure public goods vs transfers could be considered substitutes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Financial Politic & Economic Reviews / Finans Politik & Ekonomik Yorumlar is the property of Journal of Financial Politic & Economic Reviews / Finans Politik & Ekomomik Yorumlar and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Adopting an international historical perspective, this study aims to identify the main empirical regularities in the long-run growth pattern of government expenditure. The application of parametric and non-parametric analyses to a sample of developed countries observed over the period 1880–2018 allows us to detect two main findings. The first is that, beyond the long-term growth of government expenditures in absolute terms, there is evidence for three expansionary long waves corresponding to the booms before and during the twentieth century's two world wars, along with the 'golden age of public sector intervention'. The latter refers to the decline in cross-country heterogeneity in the trends and composition of absolute growth of government expenditure since the 1960s. The 'ratchet phenomenon' in the pre-WWII period and the shift in ideological focus from market to government failures in the last decades of the twentieth century provide explanations that complement Wagner's law and are consistent with the observed long-term evolution of the growth of government expenditure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzes the dynamics between public expenditure and economic growth in Peru for 1980Q1–2021Q4. We used quarterly time series of real GDP, public consumption expenditure, public expenditure, and the share of public expenditure to output. The variables were transformed into natural logarithms, wherein only the logarithm of public expenditure to output ratio is stationary and the others are non-stationary I 1 . The study of stationary time series assesses whether Wagner's law, the Keynesian hypothesis, the feedback hypothesis, or the neutrality hypothesis is valid for the Peruvian case according to Granger causality. We found cointegration between real GDP and public expenditure, and public consumption expenditure and real GDP. Estimating error correction and autoregressive distributed lag models, we concluded that Wagner's law and the Keynesian hypothesis are valid in the Peruvian case, expressed as dynamic processes that allow us to obtain short-run and long-run impacts, permitting the mutual sustainability of economic growth and public expenditure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Social Sciences Research / Sosyal Bilimler Arastirmalari Dergisi is the property of ODU Journal of Social Sciences Research and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Which countries have the world's smallest and the world's largest governments? One-fifth of the Economic Freedom of the World index is a subindex scoring the size of government for countries across the world. This subindex is inclusive of the three dimensions of government spending, the top marginal tax rate, and the government ownership of the economy. Measured in this manner, the "smallest" governments are, generally, weak or fragile states. This paper recognizes Wagner's law, the empirical regularity that wealthier countries tend to spend more as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP). It then performs a novel adjustment to the size of government data to account for Wagner's law, re-scores and re-ranks the countries, and explores the results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The empirical relationship between public expenditure and economic growth can be analysed from different viewpoints. This study focuses on the empirical testing of the validity of Wagner's law for the Indonesian economy. The high economic growth in the sample period of 1980–2014 makes the law likely to be applicable to Indonesia. Causality and cointegration techniques are used. A key finding in our vector autoregression analysis is unidirectional causality running from GDP and price to government expenditure, supporting Wagner's law. In the case of price and government expenditure, this study also finds evidence of a long-run cointegrating relationship, which appears stable and supports unidirectional causality. The vast majority of the deviations from the equilibrium relationship between government expenditure and price are found to be transitory shocks to government expenditure. Most deviations also appear significantly countercyclical to economic activity, suggesting that government expenditure does play a role in economic stabilisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using time-series data from 1989 to 2018, this study examines the determinants of public education expenditure in the Philippines. Following Wagner's law, this paper investigated the relationship of gross domestic product per capita, unemployment rate, urban population growth, and lagged public education expenditure to public education expenditure. The ordinary least squares (OLS) method was used to determine the significance of the variables, and statistical tests were conducted to measure the overall significance of the model. The findings show that gross domestic product per capita and lagged public education expenditure were positively significant determinants contributing to the Philippines' growth of public education expenditure. On the other hand, the unemployment rate and urbanization growth were insignificant and did not contribute to the increase in expenditure. The results also provided strong evidence on the relationship between GDP per capita and public education expenditure, supporting Wagner's law in the Philippine context. Finally, this study recommends that policymakers review budget allocation and utilization to achieve wider education accessibility and better quality of education in the Philippines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Balkan & Near Eastern Journal of Social Sciences (BNEJSS) is the property of Balkan & Near Eastern Journal of Social Sciences (BNEJSS) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

It is essential to study and analyse government expenditure in order to identify trends in their development. Periodic reporting of trends in government expenditure allows economic agents to plan their business actions on the basis of objective information, reducing the uncertainty of the economic system. In addition, measuring the changes in the structure of government expenditures (especially the expenditures of the Central Government subsector by function of Classification of the functions of government (COFOG)) allows revealing the priorities in the provision of public goods. The goal of the article is to make a comparative analysis of the expenditure of the subsector "Central government" by functions of COFOG of Bulgaria and Greece and on this basis to reveal the trends in their development, as well as to highlight the differences in spending policies between the two countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Emerging Economies & Policy is the property of JOEEP: Journal of Emerging Economies & Policy and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Using disaggregated data based on the classification of functions of government (COFOG), this study seeks to verify the Keynesian view versus Wagner's law on the relationship between government expenditure and output, considering Turkey as a case study. To do so, the study attempts to capture the nature of the causal relationship between the two variables by applying linear and nonlinear Granger-causality tests. Rather than Wagner's law, the empirical findings of the study provide supportive evidence for the Keynesian view, subject to the economically meaningful components of government expenditures considered. Overall, the empirical findings show that government expenditures on defense, economic affairs, education, health, housing and community amenities, and social protection positively affect output that comes out through fiscal multiplier and investment-accelerator mechanisms proposed by John Maynard Keynes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Investigación Económica is the property of Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Facultad de Economia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper examines the relationship between real GDP and government spending for the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. Linear Granger causality tests in the time and frequency domains provide moderate support for Wagner's law in four countries and weak support for the Keynesian model in two countries. In contrast, asymmetric nonlinear causality tests in the frequency domain support Wagner's law in five countries, while some form of the Keynesian hypothesis is valid in all six GCC countries. Our results illustrate the importance of using nonlinear, asymmetric models to examine causal relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Optimum: Journal of Economics & Management Sciences / Ekonomi ve Yönetim Bilimleri Dergisi is the property of Optimum: Journal of Economics & Management Sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper explores the relationship between public spending and economic growth in Nigeria between 1981 and 2019. The study employs ARDL along with Granger causality test to determine the directional and dynamic relationship. The results show that social and community recurrent expenditure, social and community services capital expenditure and administration recurrent expenditure simulates Nigeria Economic growth (GDPGR), while, economic service recurrent expenditure (ESRX), economic service capital expenditure (ESCX), transfer capital expenditure and transfer recurrent expenditure deters Nigeria economic growth (GDPGR). The findings further reveal that there is unidirectional causality that runs from both administrative capital expenditure (ADCX) and administration recurrent expenditure (ADRX) to economic growth (GDPGR). The study recommends that government should increase her spending on both recurrent and capital expenditures on social and community as well as administrative recurrent expenditure to move towards achieving vision 2030, while it should reduce the budgetary allocation to capital and recurrent expenditure on transfer, administration capital expenditure, and also reduce borrowing to reduce debt services. Finally, the government should monitor the proper disbursement of the allocated fund, block all loopholes and ensure full implementation of the budget. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public investment has shown increasing trends both in nominal and as a share of GDP over years in Ethiopia. These upsurges in public investment are believed to be due to factors that have visible impact on the fiscal posture of the country. To investigate the validity of Wagner's law in Ethiopia; this study sets determinants of public investment in Ethiopia as a general objective. Specifically, the study sought to examine the main influencing factors on level of public investment in Ethiopia along three sets of explanatory variables. In order to meet the aforementioned objective, the study employed an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach over the period 1985–2019. Results from the bound tests show that there is a long-run relationship between the variables. The real per capita GDP is found to be positively and significantly impact on level of public investment which shows that there an evidence in favour of Wagner's law,i.e. public spending has a high income elasticity of demand. This study also found that there is a positive relationship between public investment and private investment which shows that two are moving in tandem. Again, the study also found that foreign aid has positive impact on public investment implying that additional foreign aid leads to larger spending of the government on capital. Moreover, the study found that the degree of urbanization suggests that levels of public spending are higher in the urban sector than rural economies. These findings give strong policy implication to the policy makers because an increase in public investments in may then help spur economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regardless of theoretical grounds that presumed a positive relationship between government spending and economic growth, the extant research on this nexus is inclusive. This article re-examines the relationship between public expenditure and economic growth using more copious panel data set covering 59 countries in 1990–2019. Our empirical results confirm the unidirectional causality between economic growth and government expenditure where the causation runs between public spending and GDP growth. The results at large support the Keynesian framework that asserts the importance of government expenditure in stimulating economic growth. Further, the analysis reveals that after considering all the control variables such as trade accessibility, investment and inflation public spending positively affects economic growth. With regards to control variables, it was found that investment has a significant and positive bearing on economic growth. Evidence from the regression estimates further displays that trade openness encourages evolution in developing countries. However, population growth and unemployment have a detrimental effect on economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to analyze state‐level public finances in Brazil. We examine the dynamics of governmental spending in a panel of 26 Brazilian states in search of evidence of Wagner's Law and Fiscal Illusion Hypothesis. For the period ranging from 2002 to 2015, three methodologies are applied: dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS), fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS), and pooled mean group (PMG). The main empirical results found indicate that (1) there is strong evidence of Fiscal Illusion caused by public deficit and by central government transfer grants; (2) there are possible Flypaper Effects; (3) there is no evidence in support of Wagner's Law; (4) there is low publicness degree of local expenditures; (5) due to Fiscal Illusion, less‐developed Brazilian states tend to be stuck in a public expenditure growth mechanism, especially in expenses related to non‐public goods, which tend to benefit private interests and lobby groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine if the Wagner's law, that indicates a long-run economic relationship between government expenditure and income, holds across 15 non-special category states of India post the 1991 liberalization era. In particular, we study the non-stationarity and cointegration properties between state-level government expenditure and state-level income. Given the presence of cross-sectional dependence in our data, we adopt the second-generation panel unit root and cointegration tests. Using panel estimation methods, our results indicate that the Wagner's law holds at an all-India level with respect to all categories of government expenditure i.e. aggregate government expenditure, development expenditure and non-development expenditure. States with above-average income mostly exhibit long-run elasticity less than one across all types of government expenditure while states with below-average income level exhibit long-run elasticity greater than one across all categories of government expenditure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the relationship between economic development and the growth of the state by testing Wagner's Law. We begin with a general test, and find it does not hold in all cases: it breaks down at higher levels of development and in more recent time periods. This suggests that Wagner's law has specific scope conditions, beyond which states do not continue to grow as economies grow. We use a series of models to explore the temporal scope of Wagner's law and the point at which state growth may hit a ceiling. We conclude limits on the growth of the state are set by limits on the capacity of states to increase taxation. States can avoid this problem temporarily by running budget deficits, but eventually accumulated debt forces them to cut expenditures. Spending is tied to tax revenue like a rubber band, it can stretch only so far before being pulled back. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tests the Wagner's assumption of the one-sided directional flow moving from economic growth to public spending considering an international database over the 1996–2012 period. By using indicators on the level of country control of corruption, government effectiveness, political stability, rule of law, regulatory quality and voice and accountability, the paper analyses the economic performance-public spending nexus controlling for the quality of the institutions. The empirical evidence supports the existence of the Wagner's law, showing that, in the short-run, public spending positively reacts to a positive shock in national income, with a lower magnitude for democratic countries. In the long run, the error-correction model shows the convergence between public spending and national output occurring less quickly for non-democratic, low-income and to a smaller extent for non-OECD countries. Institutional quality, such as effort in controlling corruption and the presence of regulations that permit and promote private sector development, may help reducing the amount of per capita public spending and making it more productive. Higher expenses in compositional amenities such as public services for the elderly may explain why public spending per capita will increase the most in economies with a higher share of the population that need healthcare facilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We tested the efficacy of Wagner's public expenditure-growth model using Nigeria data. Wagner hypothesized that public expenditure is an endogenous variable in the expenditure-growth model, and is driven by rise in output growth of an economy. We placed emphasis on the signs and significance of the coefficients of the variables used, while adopting Pesaran and Shin bounds testing approach to determine the long run relationship of the variables, and Autoregressive Distributed Lag Model of Error Correction Mechanism and Wald Coefficient Test to determine the long run and short run causality of the model. We found Wagner's hypothesis to be true in Nigerian situation. Economic growth caused total government expenditure to rise in the shortterm. We also found a downturn in current government spending at the fifth lagged value of RGDP which can be adjudged that economic growth impact on government spending lingers on till four years lag, beyond which its impacts become a constraint to growth. Changes in per capita income caused by population change increases government expenditure. We Concluded that Wagner's growth-expenditure model is efficacious in Nigerian. We suggest an increased spending on infrastructures and other income generating capital projects for revenue sustainability in the face of rising expenditure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Al-Quds Open University for Administrative & Economic Research is the property of Al-Quds Open University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Journal of Financial, Accounting & Managerial Studies is the property of Journal of Financial, Accounting & Managerial Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Al Bashaer Economic Journal is the property of Al Bashaer Economic Journal and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study is the first attempt to examine the validity of the Wagner's law hypothesis by employing time-series data over the period from 1970 to 2015 in Kuwait. In this paper, the causal relationship between government expenditure and economic growth is tested by conducting the Granger non-causality test developed by (Toda, H. Y., and T. Yamamoto. 1995. "Statistical Inference in Vector Autoregressions with Possibly Integrated Processes." Journal of Econometrics 66 (1): 225–250.) and (Dolado, J. J., and H. Lütkepohl. 1996. "Making Wald Tests Work for Cointegrated VAR Systems." Econometric Reviews 15 (4): 369–386.). The empirical results support the unidirectional causality running from government spending to economic growth. This occurs only when real government expenditure per capita is a proxy for state activity and real gross domestic product (GDP) per capita is a measure of economic growth. This implies that Wagner's law does not apply for Kuwait's economy, and the Keynesian proposition of government spending as a policy instrument that encourages and leads economic growth is supported by the data used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to examine the Wagner's law validity, and whether it can explain the U.K. public spending expansion for the period 1850–2010. According to Wagner's Law, economic development is the key determinant to public sector growth. Accordingly, the public sector grows overproportionally compared to national income when economies develop. We test this hypothesis for the UK. The data covers a period in which the U.K. economy experienced increased economic growth, government spending and met most of the assumption of Wagner's Law (industrialisation, urbanisation, increased population). Furthermore, the long data set ensures the reliability of our results in terms of statistical and economic conclusions. We apply unit root tests, unit root tests with structural breaks, cointegration techniques and the Granger causality test. Our results indicate a presence of a long run relationship between national income and government spending, while the causality is bi-directional, thus we find support for Wagner's and Keynesian hypotheses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As South Africa deals with the challenges associated with modelling and adopting the appropriate policy for its economic system, the underlying structural and institutional imbalances within the economy have continued to impede the effects of government expenditure on economic growth, thereby misdirecting the focus of the government. This study empirically revisits the validity of Wagner's law in the South African economy, as indicated by previous literature. The cointegration, Granger causality, impulse response function and threshold analysis were used as the estimation techniques, employing quarterly time series data for the period 1970Q1 to 2016Q4. While the cointegration results show the existence of long-run equilibrium relationship, Granger causality findings indicate a bi-directional causality between the two variables, supported by variance decomposition and impulse response analysis. The threshold regression lines conform to similar findings. This implies that in reality, Wagner's law does not apply to the South African economy, given other social factors existing in the economy. This study therefore suggests that in order to determine the real direction of causality between the two variables, there needs to be a balance in the allocation of government expenditure, especially for investment purposes, as well as to curtail the huge portion that goes towards consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Nigeria, the government activities vis-à-vis public expenditure has grown rapidly both in absolute, relative and as a share of GDP over the years. These growths in government expenditure have been due to certain factors which are believed to have significant effect on the fiscal operation of the country. These perceived implications of government expenditure expansion on the economy necessitate the need to understand factors that are responsible for the growth in government expenditure size. For that, the study employs a slightly modified version of Wagner's law by incorporating new variables such as oil revenue, trade openness, public debt, exchange rate, oil price, taxation and inflation—to examine their effect on government expenditure size. The study uses time series data for Nigeria spanning between 1970 and 2017. Time series data were analysed using Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model. The findings of the study reveal that oil revenue, GDP, population, trade openness, oil price, taxation and inflation are important determinants of the size of Nigeria's government expenditure. The study recommends among others that the revenue base of the country should be diversified beyond oil sector, strengthening of fiscal and monetary policies to ensure stability in price level and exchange rate, the use of fiscal rule through excess crude oil account should also be strengthened to create buffer against fluctuation in oil price and as well appropriate population reduction policies should be undertaken to curtail rapid population growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to Adolph Wagner’s “Law of Increasing State Activity” economic development is accompanied by an increasing role of state activities and functions. Unfortunately, this view has never been stated explicitly by Wagner and the lack of a precise mathematical formulation led researchers to use various and sometimes incomparable specifications. Moreover, in previous empirical studies state activity was almost always replaced by public spending, and hence Wagner’s Law was effectively narrowed down to the “Law of Increasing State Spending”. This paper is an attempt to restore Wagner’s Law. Contrary to previous studies, it examines whether Wagner’s Law in its original form held in Australia in the 1901-2008 period by studying the relationship between real per capita income and a composite variable of state activity that takes both financial and legislative activities of the federal government into account. Although this composite variable still falls short of capturing all levels and sorts of state or government activities, it is a far more comprehensive measure than any of its components used individually in earlier studies. The results based on this composite measure provide no empirical evidence in favour of Wagner’s Law in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study tests Wagner's law in Nigeria in both the short and long-run using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) technique of estimation and controlling for structural breaks between the periods 1981-2016. Results showed that both in the short and long-run, evidence pointed to a negative but insignificant relationship between government expenditure and economic growth, with a larger negative effect in the long-run. The study controlled for oil export earnings, which was found to positively and significantly influence government spending in both the short and long-run. Results did not support the Wagner law. It was therefore recommended that the economy be diversified into more labour intensive sectors so as to increase output and income per capita and so that government expenditure can be based more on tax receipts than on oil export earnings as more financially responsible households will demand increase in government expenditure as their level of income increases, especially for the provision of public sector services the households currently bear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to investigate the determinants of public health expenditure in Malaysia. An Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach proposed by Pesaran & Shin (1999) and Pesaran et al. (2001) is applied to analyse annual time series data during the period from 1970 to 2017. The study focused on four explanatory variables, namely per capita gross domestic product (GDP), healthcare price index, population aged 65 years and above, as well as infant mortality rate. The bounds test results showed that the public health expenditure and its determinants are cointegrated. The empirical results revealed that the elasticity of government health expenditure with respect to national income is less than unity, indicating that public health expenditure in Malaysia is a necessity good and thus the Wagner's law does not exist to explain the relationship between public health expenditure and economic growth in Malaysia. In the long run, per capita GDP, healthcare price index, population aged more than 65 years, and infant mortality rate are the important variables in explaining the behaviour of public health expenditure in Malaysia. The empirical results also prove that infant mortality rate is significant in influencing public health spending in the short run. It is noted that macroeconomic and health status factors assume an important role in determining the public health expenditure in Malaysia and thus government policies and strategies should be made by taking into account of these aspects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main aim of this study is to extend the recently introduced sequential panel selection method (SPSM) to a cointegration framework which is particularly used to investigate Wagner's law for 9 South African provinces. We particularly apply the SPSM to the PMG and ARDL cointegration frameworks which we apply to annual data spanning from 2001 to 2016. The main findings show that when applying single country/region estimates we fail to find evidence of cointegration whereas within panel regressions, cointegration effects are present for the entire dataset. In further applying the SPSM we observed significant Wagner's effects for panels inclusive of Gauteng, Eastern Cape and Kwazulu-Natal provinces and when these provinces are excluded from the panels, cointegration effects are unobserved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Brazilian Journal of Applied Economics / Economía Aplicada is the property of FEA-RP, Universidade de Sao Paulo and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Lecturas de Economia is the property of Universidad de Antioquia, Facultad de Ciencias Economicas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The main aim of this study is to extend the recently introduced sequential panel selection method (SPSM) to a cointegration framework which is particularly used to investigate Wagner's law for 9 South African provinces. We particularly apply the SPSM to the PMG and ARDL cointegration frameworks which we apply to annual data spanning from 2001 to 2016. The main findings show that when applying single country/region estimates we fail to find evidence of cointegration whereas within panel regressions, cointegration effects are present for the entire dataset. In further applying the SPSM we observed significant Wagner's effects for panels inclusive of Gauteng, Eastern Cape and Kwazulu-Natal provinces and when these provinces are excluded from the panels, cointegration effects are unobserved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study empirically analyzes the validity of Wagner's Law for Indian economy. With the use of annual time series data from 1970–71 to 2013–14, all the six versions of Wagner's Law have been analyzed to test the relationship between government expenditure and gross domestic product. Wagner's Law states that the economic growth is the causative factor of the growth of the public expenditure. The study applied the unit root test and cointegration test to find the long-run relationship between government expenditure and gross domestic product. The present study employed the various econometric techniques such as unit root test, cointegration, and causality analysis for empirical analysis. The empirical analysis under study inferred mixed results of Wagner's Law for Indian economy, where four versions, namely Peacock, Gupta, Guffman, and Musgrave, found valid for Indian economy. The study concluded that the Wagner's Law is valid for the Indian economy except the Pryor and Mann Versions of the Wagner's Law. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Does fiscal discipline restrain the government from increasing its budget size? To answer this question, this paper investigates whether Wagner's law is satisfied for two types of states: US states, in which fiscal sovereignty is established, and German states, in which fiscal transfer dependence is high and budget constraints are softened. In US states, we demonstrate that Wagner's law is validated, while some of the balanced budget requirements weaken the validity of the law. In German states, we find an 'inverse' law, especially after the bailouts of Bremen and Saarland. The 'inverse' law is a new channel of growth in government size and means that soft budget constraints cause significant negative correlation between government size and output. These results are robust regardless of whether intergovernmental fiscal transfers are taken into account, while they quantitatively change the validity of the law. Our findings imply that the characteristics of fiscal discipline are the prime determinants of the channel and degree of growth in government size. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the syndrome of 'this time is different' with respect to Reinhart and Rogoff's (This time is different: eight centuries of financial folly Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2011) interpretation of their extensive, historical data on financial default, and with particular regard to public debt in a closed-economy. Recurrent and over-generous promises to credulous investors of an ex ante, policy-optimal return amounts to an extra policy instrument in boosting the demand for public debt. In a numerical simulation of a version of the Diamond (Am Econ Rev 55:1126-1150, 1965) model, we find that the incentive for the policy-maker to pursue this strategy is trivial if taxes can be set at a policy-optimal level, but possibly over-riding if they cannot. Thus, the main result lines up with the empirical conclusion of Reinhart et al. (Debt intolerance. Debt intolerance, 2003) that 'debt intolerant countries have weak fiscal structures'. The subsidiary result of the model is that defaulting countries will also have higher shares of public expenditure. Thus the model also predicts Wagner's Law to the extent that fiscal structure is correlated with economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Financial Politic & Economic Reviews / Finans Politik & Ekonomik Yorumlar is the property of Journal of Financial Politic & Economic Reviews / Finans Politik & Ekomomik Yorumlar and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

We revisit Wagner’s law by function of government expenditure. Using data of 14 European countries between 1996 and 2013, we apply panel data and SUR methods to assess public expenditure–income elasticities. We find that some functions of government spending for a few countries (e.g. Austria, France, the Netherlands and Portugal) validate Wagner’s law. For the Netherlands, expenditures with environment protection increase more than proportionately to economic growth, and for France that is the case of spending in housing and community amenities. In addition, Greece is the only country where two public spending items react more than one to one to growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The public sector has grown dramatically over the past few centuries in many developed countries. In this article, we use wavelet methods to distinguish between two leading explanations for this growth – Wagner’s law and the displacement effect. In doing so, we use the long-term data of 10 OECD countries for a maximum time span of 1800–2009. We find that the validity of Wagner’s law is likely to vary strongly over time for each country. A roughly similar feature in most of the countries is that the law is less valid in the earliest stage of economic development as well as in the advanced stages, with the validity tending to follow an inverted U-shaped pattern with economic development. Further, our results indicate that the long-run growth of government size cannot be adequately explained by Wagner’s law. On the other hand, the displacement effect appears to account for the bulk of the growth in most of the countries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Optimum: Journal of Economics & Management Sciences / Ekonomi ve Yönetim Bilimleri Dergisi is the property of Optimum: Journal of Economics & Management Sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Gümüshane University Electronic Journal of the Institute of Social Science / Gümüshane Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Elektronik Dergisi is the property of Gumushane University Electronic Journal of the Institute of Social Science and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)