The long run relationship between openness and government size: evidence from bounds test

The bounds test is applied to determine the existence of a level relationship between government size, openness, terms of trade volatility, and external risk using time series data from Australia, Canada, England, Norway, Sweden, and the USA. Bounds test results show that the existence of a long run relationship in the USA and Canada, but not in any of the other countries. Long run parameters are estimated using both autoregressive distributed lag and FM-OLS procedures. Results vary from country to country, with some evidence that government size is significantly affected by openness and terms of trade volatility. However, contrary to argument and evidence developed using cross-section data, empirical evidence presented in this paper show that the size of the government has not changed to mitigate the effect of increased income risks associated with greater openness.