We aim to analyze the potential positive or negative effects of public expenditure on economic growth, as well as their determinants. To this goal, we use a simple theoretical model, which has the specificity to distinguish between public investment and consumption expenditure, and which could...

We perform a Meta-Regression Analysis (MRA) of the literature on government size and corruption, examining 450 empirical estimates retrieved from 44 primary papers published from 1998 to 2022. We find considerable heterogeneity in the results, mainly depending on whether the paper is published...

This paper contributes to the still unresolved issue of the growth impact of government size by analysing a historical panel data set of 17 developed countries that ranges from 1880 to 2016. The unique feature of the long-time dimension allows for conducting a kind of natural experiment....

The purpose of this paper is to identify the driving elements of the South African financial sector. While South Africa's financial sector appears robust, there exists a dearth of empirical research investigating the determinants of its development. Thus, this work assesses how three critical...

This paper explores how civic capital shapes the relationship between government size and economic performance. Building on an exogenousgrowth version of Barro (1990), we incorporate O-ring technology to capture task complementarity in the public sector, highlighting the role of civic capital in...

This paper explores how civic capital shapes the relationship between government size and economic performance. Building on an exogenousgrowth version of Barro (1990), we incorporate O-ring technology to capture task complementarity in the public sector, highlighting the role of civic capital in...

We examine the impact of government size on economic fluctuations and the role of fiscal policy in promoting macroeconomic stability in the period 1980-2024. The results indicate that indirect taxes, capital taxes, and social security contributions (as a percentage of GDP) are associated with...

I show that the weather condition on election day affects future fiscal policy. When it rains during state elections, there is an increase in the relative income of voters, which is followed by an increase in expenditure and debt. The increase in expenditure is directed towards a larger police...

This study investigates the size and determinants of the shadow economy in Nigeria. It adopts an aggregation approach within the monetary framework and utilises the ARDL estimation technique to analyse quarterly data from 2010 Q1 to 2019 Q4. On average, the results suggest that the quarterly...

Noting that few studies to date have investigated the determinants of social cohesion in a comprehensive and systematic manner, this paper examines the macro-level determinants of social cohesion using a panel of up to 92 developing and developed countries for the period 1990-2020. Employing the...

There is scant empirical economic research regarding the way that Latin American governments efficiently allocate their spending across different functions to achieve higher growth. While most papers restrict their analysis to the size of government, much less is known about the composition of...

We perform a Meta-Regression Analysis (MRA) of the literature on government size and corruption, examining 450 empirical estimates retrieved from 44 primary papers published from 1998 to 2022. We find considerable heterogeneity in the results, mainly depending on whether the paper is published...

This paper contributes to the still unresolved issue of the growth impact of government size by analysing a historical panel data set of 17 developed countries that ranges from 1880 to 2016. The unique feature of the long-time dimension allows for conducting a kind of natural experiment....

The Fraser Institute's Economic Freedom of the World index and the Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom allow researchers to empirically test the hypothesis that greater economic freedom leads to higher economic growth. Government size is a component of both indices. A larger...

Contradictory to conventional economic theory, which foresees any increase in the size of government as inflationary, this article provides evidence that the reaction of price levels to changes in the size of government is nonlinear. The price levels do not necessarily increase in response to a...

The growth of government (GoG) has garnered significant attention among scholars and practitioners across disciplines such as economics, political science, and public management. Despite the optimism surrounding this concept, its future trajectory in the twenty-first century remains uncertain....

Empirical literature explains the heterogeneity of fiscal multiplier estimates through the analysis of various cyclical and structural determinants of economies, with economic inequality, as one of the key structural characteristics, receiving relatively little attention so far. In this study,...

The Fraser Institute's Economic Freedom of the World index and the Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom allow researchers to empirically test the hypothesis that greater economic freedom leads to higher economic growth. Government size is a component of both indices. A larger...

There are 15 independent countries that emerged (re-emerged) from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics since its collapse in 1991. The process of independence of the Former Soviet Union (FSU) countries was followed by massive economic, political, and institutional reforms that, in most cases,...

Many prior studies on the government-growth nexus have focused on Keynesian (Keynes, 1936) or neoclassical (Lucas, 1990) traditions, while a recent research strand has paid widespread attention to Barro (1990)'s non-linear perspective. Although modern complexity sciences suggest an overall...

Given the rise in the government debt level in recent times, this paper aims to examine the effect of an increase in government size on risk premium and its transmission in the economy. We jointly identify the term spread shock (originating at the short end and the long end) and the government...

"Recognising the regained importance of fiscal policy over the last two decades, this timely book provides much-needed insight into the manifold changes and challenges of fiscal policy and how it is adapting to the unpredictable nature of the 21st century. Fiscal Policy in a Turbulent Era brings...

Corruption is often a source of contentious debate, covering different areas of knowledge, such as philosophy and sociology. In this paper we assess the effects of corruption on economic activity and highlight the relevance of the size of the government. We use dynamic models and the Generalized...

If firm profits rise to a level far above than what would have been earned in a competitive economy, this might give the firms market power, which might in turn influence the activity of the government. In this paper, we perform a detailed empirical study on the potential effects of firm profits...

This study uses a large firm-level data set covering more than 80 countries to explore the effects of firm-size, city-size, and government-size on perceived and experienced corruption. Four points summarize our main findings, which seem instructive and new. First, there is a broad structural...

Group identity is known to exert a powerful socio-psychological influence on behaviour but to date has been largely explored as a uni-dimensional phenomenon. We consider the role of multiple dimensions of identity, asking what might happen to ingroup and outgroup perceptions and the resulting...

The purpose of this paper is to identify the driving elements of the South African financial sector. While South Africa's financial sector appears robust, there exists a dearth of empirical research investigating the determinants of its development. Thus, this work assesses how three critical...

Citizen support is an important precursor to climate change mitigation polices. Public opinion can shape public policy and vice versa. Despite an extensive literature, there is still disagreement on how country-level contextual factors shape overall support for environmental policy. This paper...

This paper investigates the impact of public social spending, government investment and government consumption spending on economic growth using panel data from 2000 to 2019 for 25 OECD countries. Methods including the fixed effects, random effects, and the generalised method of moments are...

Sri Lanka directs its macroeconomic policies to fulfill its economic objectives. The variables of Government expenditure, Government size, Economic growth, Inflation, and Unemployment are vital in this regard. However, despite following strategies based on assumption of nexus between the said...

Most studies find that larger government is associated with slower long-run growth. However, which elements of government intervention drive the result and if the conclusion applies to all political regimes remains an open question, which this paper addresses. The findings indicate that...