The optimal government size in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia: An ARDL bounds testing approach to cointegration

This study attempts to estimate the optimum government size in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) using annual data covering the 1971-2019 period by applying the linear and nonlinear Autoregressive Distributed Lag ARDL Model. The main focus is whether the Armey curve is valid for KSA. The statistical diagnostic tests provide an evidence for the model adequacy and that the estimation results are reliable. Moreover, the ARDL short-run estimation results revealed that the speed of adjustment is (−0.82) indicating that it takes about 14 months to correct toward the long-run equilibrium due to a short-run shock. The NARDL estimation results revealed asymmetric relationship between government expenditures and economic growth. Further, a positive shock has a positive impact while a negative shock reduces economic growth. Based on the long-run estimation results, the optimum government size is 26.9 as a share of GDP, which is greater than the average share (24.2) during the study period. Based on such result, it is obvious that Saudi Arabia has a room to increase the expenditures share up to the optimal size estimated in the study.