Search

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]

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.

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]

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]

This article examined whether the Wagner's law that represents the long-run relationship between income and public expenditure holds at the subnational level in India. It also examines whether the Wagner's law is revenue expenditure specific or capital expenditure specific in the context of Indian sub-nationals. The paper covers 21 Indian States and a time period of 40 years, from 1980-81 to 2019-20. In this study we have assessed six pairs of relationships among state-level income, public expenditures, revenue expenditure, capital outlay, public expenditure on economic services, public expenditure on social services, and expenditure on the developmental sector. The validity of the law was examined for nine different panels of states broadly under income categories and geographical regions. Unlike first-generation panel techniques, which fail to account for the aspects of cross-sectional independence and heterogeneity, the present study tests the validity of the Wagner's law using the second-generation panel unit root method and cointegration approach. The analysis adopted Panel Dynamic Ordinary Least Square to test the evidence of Wagner's law hypothesis. The findings reveal that Indian states are heterogeneous in terms of public expenditure, and there exists cross-sectional dependence. There also exists a long-run cointegrating relation between state-level income and state-level public expenditure. For the full sample, while this study finds holding Wagner's law, there is a mixed validity of the law in different panels across income categories and regions. In addition, it is observed that the validity of Wagner's law in the Indian Subnational context is mainly driven by the high-income major states, and it is more capital outlay centric. To conclude, these responsive affiliations comprehend the effectiveness of public expenditure as a fiscal policy instrument in stimulating economic growth and the contribution of economic growth in the budget exercise at the subnational level. Therefore, subnational governments need to be more strategic to ensure growth momentum as the public expenditure indirectly and directly causes the living standard and welfare of the people in the economy. It must be acknowledged that India adopted fiscal rules in 2005, which may limit the procyclical fiscal policy during the swings in the business cycle, and thus have implications for budget exercises at the subnational level. [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]

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]

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]

Purpose – One of the main theories regarding the relationship between government expenditure and gross domestic product (GDP) is Wagner’s law. This law was developed in the late-19th century by Adolph Wagner (1835–1917), a prominent German economist, and depicts that an increase in government expenditure is a feature often associated with progressive states. This paper aims to examine the validity of Wagner’s law in Egypt for 1960–2018. The relationship between real government expenditure and real GDP is tested using three versions of Wagner’s law. Design/methodology/approach – To test the validity of Wagner in Egypt, law time-series analysis is used. The methodology used in this paper is: unit-root tests for stationarity, Johansen cointegration approach, error-correction model and Granger causality. Findings – The results provide strong evidence of long-term relationship between GDP and government expenditure. Moreover, the causal relationship is found to be bi-directional. Hence, this study provides support for Wagner’s law in the examined context. Research limitations/implications – It should be noted, however, that there are some limitations to this study. For instance, in this paper, the government’s size was measured through government consumption expenditure rather than government expenditure due to data availability, which does not fully capture the government size. Moreover, the data available was limited and does not fully cover the earliest stages of industrialization and urbanization for Egypt. Furthermore, although time-series analysis provides a more contextualized results and conclusions, the obtained conclusions suffer from their limited generalizability. Originality/value – This paper aims to specifically make a contribution to the empirical literature for Wagner’s law, by testing the Egyptian data using time-series econometric techniques for the longest time period examined so far, which is 1960–2018.

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]

This research paper analyses the relationship between gross domestic product and public expenditures in nominal terms. The analysis is being done by using the standard Peacock-Wiseman specification of the Wagner’s law and provides the results for the Visegrád Four countries, i.e. the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary. We aim to answer a question concerning the existence of a long and/or short-term relationship between the nominal GDP and nominal public expenditures, which consist of current and capital expenditures. To address this question, we employ the VAR model, the Johansen Cointegration test and the VEC model. We study a period between the first quarter of 1999 and the second quarter of 2019 and find out mixed results for the Visegrád Four countries.

Wagner’s law relates the positive relation between public spending and economic activity, where greater economic activity leads to increased public spending. Using Panel unit root, cointegration, Fully Modified Ordinary Least Squares (FMOLS) and Granger causality procedures this paper seeks to test the validity of Wagner’s law for a group of sixteen sub-Saharan African countries during the period 2002-2015. The findings show validity for Wagner’s law when “productive” government expenditure is taken as the measure of public spending. Compared to “productive” government expenditure, total government expenditure shows weaker evidence for the validity of Wagner’s law. Therefore governments in SSA should direct more spending towards productive expenditures if they seek to exploit growth benefits in the long run.

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]

The under-developed economies spend more on public goods and services. The low income states in India spend relatively more on public goods and services as compared to middleincome and high-income states. These low-income Indian states, however, perform relatively poor in socio-economic indicators such as poverty, health facilities, education, etc. This raises a question that why low-income states in India are more deprived despite of high public expenditure. The question has been addressed by testing the Wagner's law for low-income states in India for the period 1980-81 to 2014-15. Wagner's law states that public expenditure increases with rise in state activity. The study considers development expenditure-social sector and economic services. Each head is further categorized into revenue and capital expenditure. Since the study uses time series data for each panel, IM-Pasaran test is used for testing stationarity, and ARDL Model is used for obtaining long-term estimates of Wagner's law. We find that on average low income states in India tend to spend more on social sector and economic services as the output increases. However, the analysis of individual low-income states is different. Results of Odisha and West Bengal validate Wagner's law, public expenditure on both social sector and economic services had increased with output. In Rajasthan, expenditure on social sector is revenue in nature and expenditure in economic services is dominated by capital outlay (elasticity less than one). Although rest of the low income states spends on social sector and economic services with growth in output, the expenditure is revenue in nature. The results indicate that majority of low income states spends more on maintenance of available social services and less on creation of infrastructure. The expenditure on creation of infrastructure is necessary for the development of industries and agriculture in under-developed economies, and thus, capital expenditure is crucial for overall wellbeing of society. The low-income states in India had spent only 37% (average) of total expenditure on capital outlay of economic services during the period from 1980-81 to 2014-15. Apart from having revenue expenditure on social services, low-income states should focus on the development of economic services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing literature on the link between government expenditure and economic growth shows mixed results. This paper, while analysing the impact of government expenditure on economic growth using the ARDL framework, also investigates whether the difference in data types is one of the reasons for the conflicting findings reported in the literature about Wagner's law and Keynesian hypothesis. We use Sri Lanka as a case study for this analysis and use three different forms of model specifications at the aggregate and disaggregated (sectoral) levels. Results indicate that both Wagner's and Keynesian's propositions are supported by the Sri Lankan data in the long-run for all three model specifications and the results are inconclusive in the short-run. This suggests that Wagner's law and Keynesian hypothesis are sensitive to the data type used and the results could be different depending on whether the analysis is made in the short-run or long-run. Capital and recurrent expenditures are found to have a positive effect on economic growth in the short-run as well as long-run. At the disaggregated level, expenditure on agriculture and health positively impact economic growth in the long-run, while welfare expenditure has a negative effect. These findings provide important insights for policymakers to consider when allocating sectoral level expenditure budget. This study also provides insights on allocating government expenditure towards achieving United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals which countries across the globe are aiming to achieve by 2030. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wagner’s law and Keynes’ hypothesis has long been debated in economics. In this paper, we test the income-expenditure hypothesis for eighty-one of Turkey’s provinces for the period 1992 to 2013 using panel data analysis. For this purpose, the validity of these hypotheses is tested by applying recent panel cointegration and causality techniques, allowing for cross-sectional dependence and heterogeneity between regions. Under the presence of cross-sectional dependence and heterogeneity, the level of integration of the variables was tested by means of the cross-sectionally augmented Dickey-Fuller test, the presence of long-run relationship of the variables was tested with the Westerlund-Edgerton Lagrange multiplier bootstrap test, long-run cointegration coefficients were estimated with the Eberhardt-Bond panel augmented mean group method, and finally causality relationship was defined by the Dumitrescu-Hurlin test. The results of this study provide strong support for the validity of Wagner’s law and Keynes’ hypothesis for Turkey.

The paper aims at examining the causal relationship between economic growth and government expenditure in selected MENA countries over the period of 1987–2017. Unlike previous studies, we examine the causality in both panel data and time series data to get a clear idea about the causal relationships individually and as a full sample. We also revisited the causal relationship between the two variables within the framework of frequency domain causality. Our findings support the neutrality hypotheses in the short-run term for most of the countries. Thus, economic growth and government expenditure at most frequency levels evolve independently. On the other hand, we found the support of Wagner’s law, Keynes view, neutrality and bidirectional hypotheses in the long term.

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]

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]

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.

This study empirically tests if the Wagner’s law stands for the Nigerian economy using data for the period 1981-2015. Form the results, economic, social and community services expenditure show highly significant values suggesting that these sectors are very much needed and still adds value to the economy. The results of the Granger causality analysis indicates that there is a bi-directional causality between economic growth and government spending, which posit to a high level of accuracy that Wagner’s law holds for Nigeria. The result suggests that economic growth has an important role to play in determining government spending because as the economy grows, it expands and for this, government need to expand its spending to meet up with the demands of the expansion. There is therefore the need for curtail the rapid growth of its size above the optimum level that stimulates rise in expenditure. Any further expansion in expenditure should focus on economic, social and community services since they are growth enhancing.

The aim of this study is to determine the direction of the relationship between income and public expenditures in the 2005-2014 period of the Turkish economy at a sub-regional level. While Gross Domestic Product per capita was preferred as income criteria, the functional classification was used in public expenditures. In modeling variables, the specification developed by Peacock and Wiseman to test Wagner's law was used. The Regional unemployment rate was added to the right-hand side of the model as a control variable. Hypothesis tests were performed on the predicted regression models, and estimators were preferred to produce robust standard errors that would increase the effectiveness of the models. After interpreting the elasticity coefficients obtained from estimating the models, the causality relationship between income and public expenditures was determined by applying Dumitrescu and Hurlin panel causality analysis method. When the elasticity coefficients obtained from the models were examined under the model proposed by Peacock and Wiseman, it was found that the criteria that the elasticity coefficient should be greater than one were not met in all of the models. According to Dumitrescu and Hurlin panel causality test results, which were conducted to determine causality between six different public expenditures and gross domestic product, there was a two-way causality relationship between two expenditures. On the other hand, it has been determined that there is a one-way causality relationship from public expenditure towards the gross domestic product.

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]

Research on the nexus between government expenditure and economic growth produces mixed results from different countries. The objective of this paper is to test if a causal relationship exists between government expenditure and economic growth in South Africa. the paper relied on testing the applicability of Wagner’s and Keynesian theories on public expenditure and economic growth with data from South Africa. Data on South Africa’s government expenditure and economic growth for 1961 – 2018 were used and the Granger causality Wald test was used to analyse the causality. Neither Wager’s nor Keynesian hypothesis was proven within the limit of the fifty-eight years’ data used. This is because the results show no significant causal relationship from either side of economic growth and public expenditure. Policy makers should pay attention on how to channel government expenditure and the gains from economic growth to improve citizens’ ability to increase their productive capital. Further researchers should expand the time series coverage to go beyond 1961 to check for new results; a regional panel data for Southern Africa is also recommended for further research. This paper produces a new test of Wagner’s and Keynesian hypothesis by merging data from the pre-democratic with the democratic period of South Africa and applied a combination of ADF, co-integration, VAR and Granger Causality analysis. [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]

The aim of this research is to test Wagner’s law and Keynesian hypothesis in 9 Post‑Soviet countries – Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kyrgyz Republic, Moldova, and Ukraine. For this purpose, long‑ and short‑run causality between real per capita GDP and real per capita government expenditures are estimated by employing ARDL modelling approach. Estimation results support validity of Wagner’s law for Latvia, Lithuania, Uzbekistan, Georgia, Kyrgyz Republic and Ukraine, and validity of Keynesian hypothesis for Estonia, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyz Republic, and Moldova in the long‑run. Meanwhile, research findings indicate strong bidirectional short‑run causality in all countries except Lithuania and Kyrgyz Republic in the short‑run.

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]

This paper investigated the possible existence of short-term and long-term relationships between government expenditure and economic growth for Sudan by testing the validity of Wagner's law and Keynes's hypothesis for the period 1977-2016. Based on the econometric method and aggregate annual time-series data set used, we concluded that there is no evidence to support either Wagner's law or Keynes's hypothesis. Therefore, the growth of public expenditure in Sudan is not directly dependent on or determined by economic growth, as Wagner's law states. However, it is possible to examine disaggregated data to investigate public expenditure growth in Sudan in terms of Wagner's law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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.)

The validity of "augmented" Wagner's Law is evaluated using a sample of twelve OECD countries over the period of 1995–2015. The bootstrap panel Granger causality approach is utilized to detect the direction of causality between government spending and GDP, focusing on cross-sectional dependence, slope heterogeneity, and structural breaks. The results show a causal relationship in favor of Wagner's Law in seven countries, thus GDP is long-run forcing to government expenditures and that the causality runs from the former to the latter variable. The policy implication of the findings is that the upholding of Wagner's Law in the presence of aging population growth and increasing demand for welfare services may force policy makers to raise taxes or it leads to excessive borrowing which might affect sustainability of public finances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

After joining the European Union, Romania began a harmonization process with European requirements and best practices in both the economic and political system. This new approach influenced policy making processes with implications in fiscal and budgetary areas in order to ensure durable economic growth. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between public expenditure and economic growth from the perspectives of Keynes and Wagner′s law on Romania. Five representations of both Wagner’s and Keynes’s Law are tested, using annual time series data covering the period 1991-2014 after the fall of the Iron Curtain. To estimate the long-run relationship between government expenditure and economic growth, ARDL (Auto- Regression Distributed Lag) approach and Bounds Test based on Unrestricted Error Correction Model (UECM) estimation are used. Empirical results indicate that there exists a unidirectional long-run relationship from government expenditures to economic growth in Romania, which means the economic growth could affect the government expenditure. In contrast, Keynes’s Law does not hold for over the period. Based on this result the government can determine the causality between economic growth and public expenditure and better formulate strategies for different faces of the economic conjuncture.

This study re-examines the relationship between government expenditure and national income in order to test the validity of Wagner’s law for six African countries over the period from 1960 to 2013. The empirical analysis uses the Gregory and Hansen (1996) cointegration test which allows for a structural break in the long run relationships. We find supporting evidence of Wagner’s law in Ghana over the period 1960-2013 and in Cote d’Ivoire for the period 1960-1995. Evidence for Kenya for the period 1960-1991 supports both Wagner’s law and Keynesian view. The results for the other three countries do not advocate Wagner’s law or its reverse in the long run.

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.

Applicability of Wagner’s hypothesis to six East Asian countries is studied for a period of nearly a half-century during which their economic growth has often been termed as a “miracle”. Despite the high rates of growth in most cases, there is little indication to support the hypothesis except for Japan and possibly Korea. This finding is broadly supported by a variety of tests of cointegration using time-series as well as panel data.

Wagner’s Law is the first model of public expenditure in the history of public finance. It suggests that during the process of economic development the share of public spending in national income tends to expand (Wagner, 1883). Nevertheless, Peacock and Scott in 2000 wrote a paper entitled “The curious attraction of Wagner’s law”, explaining the reasons for why this (apparently) outworn theory is still studied by modern economists. On the other hand, Keynes (1936) considered public spending as an exogenous factor to be used as a policy instrument to influence growth. Moreover, Peacock and Wiseman (1961) presented the displacement effect, according to which during times of war tax rates are increased to generate more revenues, sustaining the increase in defense spending. While Peacock and Wiseman (1979) surveys the literature on public expenditure growth. This paper aims to analyze the relationship between public expenditure and aggregate income in EU countries, for the period 1980-2013, using panel data methodologies. After a brief introduction, a survey of the economic literature on this issue is discussed. Then, panel data tests on stationarity, cross-dependence, cointegration, and causality are shown. Finally, some notes on policy implications conclude the paper.

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]