IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/manch2/v58y1990i4p361-77.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Wagner's Law, Relative Prices and the Size of the Public Sector

Author

Listed:
  • Gemmell, Norman

Abstract

This paper examines the effects on the size of the government sector of changes in per capita income, population and relative output prices, using a recently revised internationally comparable data set for 117 countries. The main hypotheses considered are (1) does Wagner's 'law' hold? ( b) does government output respond to price changes? (c) does government produce mainly 'pure' private or public goods? Cross-section and time-series evidence suggests (i) almost no support for Wagner's 'law'; (ii) relative prices are important for government output; and (iii) the hypothesis that governments produce pure private goods is generally accepted. These results differ from most previous studies which have ignored relative price effects and constrained income and population elasticities. Copyright 1990 by Blackwell Publishers Ltd and The Victoria University of Manchester

Suggested Citation

  • Gemmell, Norman, 1990. "Wagner's Law, Relative Prices and the Size of the Public Sector," The Manchester School of Economic & Social Studies, University of Manchester, vol. 58(4), pages 361-377, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:manch2:v:58:y:1990:i:4:p:361-77
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gemmell, Norman & Morrissey, Oliver & Pinar, Abuzer, 1999. "Fiscal illusion and the demand for government expenditures in the UK," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 15(4), pages 687-704, November.
    2. Manuel Jaen-Garcia, 2011. "Empirical Analysis of Wagner’s Law for the Spain’s Regions," International Journal of Academic Research in Accounting, Finance and Management Sciences, Human Resource Management Academic Research Society, International Journal of Academic Research in Accounting, Finance and Management Sciences, vol. 1(1), pages 1-17, November.
    3. Steven Gordon & John Garen & J. R. Clark, 2019. "The growth of government, trust in government, and evidence on their coevolution," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 43(3), pages 456-480, July.
    4. Tridimas, George & Winer, Stanley L., 2005. "The political economy of government size," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 643-666, September.
    5. Ettah Bassey ESSIEN, 2016. "Population Growth and Economic Growth Performance in Nigeria (1981 – 2014)," Turkish Economic Review, KSP Journals, vol. 3(1), pages 143-159, March.
    6. Fabio Tramontana & Laura Gardini, 2021. "Revisiting Samuelson’s models, linear and nonlinear, stability conditions and oscillating dynamics," Journal of Economic Structures, Springer;Pan-Pacific Association of Input-Output Studies (PAPAIOS), vol. 10(1), pages 1-15, December.
    7. George Tridimas & Stanley L. Winer, 2004. "A Contribution to the Political Economy of Government Size: 'Demand', 'Supply' and 'Political Influence'," Carleton Economic Papers 04-04, Carleton University, Department of Economics.
    8. D.P. Doessel & Abbas Valadkhani, 2002. "Public Finance and The Size of Government: A Literature Review and Econometric Results for Fiji," School of Economics and Finance Discussion Papers and Working Papers Series 108, School of Economics and Finance, Queensland University of Technology.
    9. Doessel, Darrel & Valadkhani, Abbas, 2003. "The Demand for Current Public Expenditure in Fiji: Theory and Empirical Results," MPRA Paper 50391, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Paul R. Blackley, 2003. "Price versus Income Effects as Sources of Growth in Government's Share of GDP," Public Finance Review, , vol. 31(3), pages 241-262, May.
    11. Burak Sencer Atasoy & Timur Han Gür, 2016. "Does the Wagner’s Hypothesis Hold for China? Evidence from Static and Dynamic Analyses," Panoeconomicus, Savez ekonomista Vojvodine, Novi Sad, Serbia, vol. 63(1), pages 45-60, March.
    12. Gabriella Legrenzi & Costas Milas, 2002. "The Role of Omitted Variables in Identifying a Long-run Equilibrium Relationship for the Italian Government Growth," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 9(4), pages 435-449, August.
    13. Ibrahim Muhammad Muye & Rayyan Abdulkareem Kaita & Ahmad Fahmi Sheikh Hassan, 2017. "Debt and Economic Growth in an Oil Rich Economy: Evidence from Saudi Arabia," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 7(4), pages 70-75.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:manch2:v:58:y:1990:i:4:p:361-77. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/semanuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.