Government expenditure and economic growth: evidence from G7 countries

This paper examines Wagner's Law of Public Expenditure, which emphasizes economic growth as the fundamental determinant of public sector growth, using time series data drawn from the G7 industrialized countries over the sample period 1960 1993. It presents evidence on both the short- and long-run effects of growth in national income on government expenditure by resorting to recent developments in the theory of cointegrated processes. An attempt is also made in this study to examine if Wagner's Law holds between certain key components of government expenditure and income.     

Increasing Public Expenditure: Wagner's Law in OECD Countries

Abstract. The paper proposes a panel cointegration analysis of the joint development of government expenditure and economic growth in 23 Organization Economic Cooperation and Development countries. The empirical evidence provides indication of a structural positive correlation between public spending and per‐capita gross domestic product (GDP), which is consistent with the so‐called Wagner's law. A long‐run elasticity larger than 1 suggests a more than proportional increase of government expenditure with respect to economic activity. In addition, according to the spirit of the law, we found that the correlation is usually higher in countries with lower per‐capita GDP, suggesting that the catching‐up period is characterized by a stronger development of government activities with respect to economies in a more advanced state of development.     

The size and composition of government expenditure

This paper tests several leading hypotheses on determinants of government expenditure. The purpose is to avoid omitted variables bias by testing the prominent theories in a comprehensive specification, to identify persistent puzzles for the current set of theories, and to explore those puzzles in greater depth by looking at the composition of government expenditure and the level of government at which it takes place as well as its magnitude. Using Government Financial Statistics data from the IMF covering over 100 countries from 1970–2000, I look at cross-sectional and inter-temporal variation in government expenditure and both individual categories of expenditure (such as defense, education, health care) and different levels of government (central, and local). Among other results, I find a new explanation for Wagner's Law, widespread evidence that preference heterogeneity leads to decentralization rather than outright decreases in expenditures, that a great deal of the expenditure associated with increased trade openness is not in categories that explicitly insure for risk, and evidence that both political access and income inequality affect the extent of social insurance.     

Evidence of Wagner's law from Indian states

In this paper, we test for Wagner's law for 15 Indian states. We consider nine panels of states based on geography and level of economic development. Using panel unit-root, panel-cointegration, and panel-Granger causality analysis, we unravel strong evidence of Wagner's law. However, we find that the Wagner's law relationship is consumption rather than capital expenditure driven. This is a fresh revelation and our results are robust to different model specifications.     

Reconsidering Wagner’s law: evidence from the functions of the government

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.     

经济发展、老龄化与政府债务累积的加速效应

本文基于世界63个经济体1996—2016年的面板数据,运用静态、动态门槛回归模型研究了老龄化对政府债务规模的加速效应。研究表明,从长期来看,老龄化不仅能对政府债务产生显著的正向冲击,而且对于相对发达的经济体而言,老龄化对政府债务累积的影响更大。文章政策含义是,为了减缓加速效应,一方面我们需要通过提高全要素生产率、优化税收结构、完善国有资本划转等方式保持政府收入稳健增长,另一方面需要打破养老支出刚性,使其增长幅度与经济增速和政府收入增速相匹配。     

Endogenous Government Expenditure: A Test of Wagner's Hypothesis For Hong Kong

In the last two decades a revival of interest in wagner's thesis of an endogenous public sector has led to a series of empirical tests of its validity. In its barest essentials, this paper attempts to find efficient estimates of income elasticities of demand for real total government expenditure as well as for its disaggregated functional groups as a means of verifying Wagner's expectation for the Hong Kong economy. Our empirical estimates indicate that Hong Kong's public finance setting is a synchronization of a worldwide tendency for public sector expansion according to the Wagnerian expectation. These findings lead us to raise a number of policy questions concerning the financial sustainability of Hong Kong's budget system over time. [320]     

“瓦格纳法则”在中国适用性研究

"瓦格纳法则"认为,一国的公共部门,特别是政府部门的规模将随经济的增长而扩大,经济增长是财政支出增长的原因。实证分析表明,中国的经济增长和财政支出存在长期的均衡关系和格兰杰因果关系,"瓦格纳法则"在中国是成立的。     

A time-domain transfer function model of Wagner's Law: the case of the United Kingdom economy

The dynamic relationship which is implied by Wagner's Law is well established in the literature. However, the methodology which has been applied to investigate this dynamic relationship has tended to avoid a dynamic specification. This paper investigates Wagner's Law employing transfer function methodology in the time-domain for the UK over the period 1946–85.     

Wagner's hypothesis: evidence from Kuwait using cointegration tests

This paper investigates the relationship between public expenditure and a number of socioeconomic variables, including the level of income, in Kuwait. A general form of the public expenditure function is formulated and recent developments in time series econometrics, including unit roots and cointegration tests, and an error-correction model are used. Given the characteristics of the economy, alternative measures for each variables are used. The analysis in the paper is based on time-series data covering the period from 1969/70 to 1994/95. In general, the findings lend little support to the existence of long-run equilibrium relationship between public expenditure and the socioeconomic variables, and the evidence does not lend support to the validity of Wagner's law in Kuwait.     

Multivariate cointegration and causality tests of Wagner's hypothesis: evidence from the UK

The purpose of this paper is to examine the issue of omitted variables in testing the long run validity of Wagner's hypothesis. Using UK data for the period 1948 to 1997, this paper first investigates the secular relationship between public spending and economic development in a bivariate system. In all cases considered, our bivariate cointegration tests indicate the absence of a long run equilibrium condition. However, the introduction of a third variable (money supply) re-establishes a cointegrating relationship between public expenditure and economic development variables. In addition, the results of the Granger's multivariate causality test indicate a unidirectional causality from income and money supply to public spending in the long run, thus providing support for Wagner's hypothesis.     

Effect of local government expenditure on the ratio of output to capital: Evidence from panel data at China��s provincial level

This paper divides the expenditure of local government into the productive and nonproductive expenditure for revealing the effect of local government’s expenditure on output-capital efficiency through model and empirical analysis. In general, the elasticity of productive expenditure is more than that of nonproductive in a developing country. Therefore, the drawing effect of productive expenditure on economic growth is more than nonproductive one. However, the positive drawing effect of local government’s expenditure on the ratio of output to capital can be displayed only if the expenditure is within a reasonable scale. When the public expenditure has surpassed the limit, there will be a negative influence. Through our empirical analysis on current Chinese economic data, it shows that the positive drawing effect of local government productive expenditure on the ratio of output to capital is remarkable; however, the positive effect of expenditure on economic construction is critically small. In some areas, the government expenditure behavior has indirectly become the economic intervention and it reveals the negative effect and low efficiency in high speed of economic growth. It is imperative for Chinese government to improve the efficiency of economic growth by adjusting the expenditure structure of local government.     

长期增长过程的“结构性加速”与“结构性减速”:一种解释

立足于Mitchell和Maddison的历史统计数据库,本文对发达国家增长因素进行了分析,阐释了以下事实,即1970年代以后发达国家经济增长的减速,与生产率增长的减速密切相关,而生产率的减速是由于产业结构服务化这种系统性因素造成的。为此,本文提出了长期增长过程中"结构性加速"与"结构性减速"的观点。这种观点一方面系统化和清晰化了人们关于长期增长趋势的认识,另一方面在"结构性加速"向"结构性减速"过渡期间的经济问题也更容易得到解释和预测。未来几十年,中国经济结构的服务化趋势逐渐增强,"结构性加速"向"结构性减速"转换及相应问题将会凸显。相对于其他理论而言,这种观点对于中国的工业化和城市化问题可能具有更强、更直观的解释能力。     

Comparing evidence on Wagner's hypothesis from conventional and ‘real’ data

Conventional and internationally comparable data for 34 countries are utilized to assess the relationship between general government expenditure and income. While the conventional data can be deemed as mildly supportive of Wagner's hypothesis, evidence from the ICP data suggests a decline in the share of general government as income per capita rises.     

财政支出、经济外部性与政府双重角色转换——基于DSGE模型的理论分析和实证研究

将政府财政支出分解为消费性支出和生产性支出,建立了政府消费性支出与私人消费之间、政府资本与私人资本之间的非线性替代关系函数。将政府公共生产性服务和公共消费性服务的双重角色加入动态随机一般均衡(DSGE)模型,分析不同经济结构下政府的双重角色对中国宏观经济的影响差异。实证结果显示:政府生产性支出的弹性系数正在变小,政府生产性支出对中国宏观经济的影响在逐渐消失;在合理监管下,政府消费性支出有利于改善和提高人们的生活质量,并且不会对私人投资产生挤出效应。因此,政府应加大对财政消费性支出的监管力度。     

Fiscal policies, environmental pollution and economic growth

This paper develops a model of endogenous economic growth with special consideration to the role of productive public expenditure and environmental pollution; and analyses the properties of optimal fiscal policy in the steady state growth equilibrium. We consider the level of consumption as the source of pollution. Government allocates its tax revenue between pollution abatement expenditure and productive public expenditure. Optimum ratio of productive public expenditure to national income is equal to the competitive output share of the public input, when productive public expenditure is depicted as tax revenue minus abatement expenditure. However, the proportional income tax rate exceeds the competitive output share of the public input. There is no conflict between the social welfare maximizing solution and the growth rate maximizing solution in the steady state growth equilibrium. The unique steady state growth equilibrium appears to be a saddle-point when the growth rate is above a critical level and the steady state equilibrium growth rate in the market economy is not necessarily lower than the socially efficient growth rate.     

财政扩张与供需失衡:孰为因? 孰为果?

一般认为,在经济出现内需不足和供给过剩的失衡状态时,政府倾向于通过财政扩张来克服经济不景气,即经济失衡是因,财政扩张是果。而本文的研究发现,中国财政扩张也是经济失衡的重要原因,即财政扩张与经济失衡存在循环累积因果关系。原因在于:以带有累退性质的商品税为主的税制结构强化了居民消费约束,也促使国民收入分配向政府和企业倾斜;供需失衡容易导致政府扩大财政支出和实行增税政策,这将进一步强化供需失衡局面;尽管面临宏观经济失衡,但是政府调控经济的手段存在很强的工具性约束,短期看财政政策有助于带动经济增长,但是从长期看,消除危机的政策可能成为下一次危机的诱因。     

财政支出、税收与经济增长

This paper assesses the effect of fiscal policy on economic growth in an AK model with endogenous labor supply. It is found that the structure of taxation and government expenditure could affect the long-run growth rate through their effect on households’ labor-leisure choice, saving-consuming choice and the proportion of government expenditure to GDP. Barro’s (1990) plausible result that the growth rate and the income tax rate have an inverted-U relationship does not always hold. In addition, based on the panel data of 31 provinces from 1997 to 2007, we investigate the link between components of government productive expenditure and economic growth. It is found that the productive expenditure does not always have a positive effect on the growth rate, and its effect exhibits regional differences. The reason is that there is an excess amount of the government productive expenditure in China or the efficiency of the government productive expenditure may be too low.     

中国卫生投资与经济增长适应程度分析

目的：分析中国卫生投资与经济增长适应程度。方法：通过建立＂推动效应＂模型和＂拉动效应＂模型对中国卫生经费支出的水平与国民经济增长的适应程度进行具体测算。结果：中国卫生投资增长速度稍快于国民经济增长速度,其中,政府卫生投资增速稍滞后于国民经济增速,社会卫生投资增速稍快于国民经济增速,个人卫生投资增速大大超过国民经济增速。结论：减弱个人卫生投资,适当减缓社会卫生的投资,适当增加政府对卫生投资,三方面同时进行调整,达到保持或稍减缓总卫生投资增速,使其与国民经济发展相符。     

我国的政府教育支出与经济增长——基于1980—2011年的数据分析

对于政府教育支出与经济增长的关系实证研究并没有确定的结论。本文利用我国1980-2011年的时间序列数据分析了政府教育支出对经济增长的影响。实证研究表明,无论是在长期还是短期内政府教育支出都对经济增长具有正的显著的影响,即我国的政府教育支出能够促进经济增长。 Granger因果检验表明,我国的政府教育支出与经济增长之间存在双向因果关系。另外,长期中政府教育支出对经济增长的影响效果大于短期。这说明政府教育支出对经济增长的影响是个长期的累积过程,因而教育投入不应该是一种短期行为。目前我国政府的教育支出仍处于相对较低的水平,具有较大的提升空间,从而具有推动经济增长的巨大潜力。因此,为保持经济的持续增长,在近期和长期内不断加大政府对教育的投入、优化教育资源的配置应是一项极其重要的教育政策。