in line with the unprecedented development of public sector in the 20th century, many economists have studied the efficiency of the public sector in economic growth and development. evidently, one of the important aspects of these studies is to determine the optimum size of government whose theoretical principles and approaches as well as practical methods have been argued about in public secto...

From a statistical viewpoint, a panel survey has the definite advantage that it offers more accurate estimates of changes than would repeated cross—sectional surveys with the sample size (Cochran, 1977, p.345). For example, suppose one wishes to monitor changes in bus use that may follow an introduction of a new line, and a sample of 1,000 households is drawn for a survey prior to the introduct...

We provide a model for analyzing effects of the tax system and spending programs on the determination of government spending and taxpayer welfare. An improvement in the efficiency of either taxes or spending would reduce political pressure for suppressing the growth of government and thereby increase total tax revenue and spending. We demonstrate the similarity of the political responses to rev...

Immigration, Citizenship, and the Size of Government This paper analyzes the political sustainability of the welfare state in an environment where immigration is the main demographic force and where governments are able to influence the size and skill composition of immigration flows. Specifically, I present a dynamic politicaleconomy model where both income redistribution and immigration polic...

This paper provides empirical evidence of the relation between trade openness, capital openness and government expenditures in a cross-sectional time-series context. It is shown that capital openness is significantly and negatively related to government expenditures in line with the conventional wisdom that capital mobility may undermine the ability of governments to maintain larger public sect...

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 a...

HOW BIG A ROLE THE GOVERNMENT SHOULD play in the economy is always a central issue in political debates. But measuring the size of government is not simple. People often use shorthand measures, such as the ratio of spending to gross domestic product (GDP) or of tax revenues to GDP. But those measures leave out important aspects of government action. For example, they do not capture the ways gov...