IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/68390.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Wagner's law versus displacement effect

Author

Listed:
  • Funashima, Yoshito

Abstract

The public sector has grown dramatically over the past few centuries in many developed countries. In this paper, we use wavelet methods to distinguish between two leading explanations for this growth—Wagner's law and the displacement effect. In doing so, we use the long-term data of ten OECD countries for a maximum time span of 1800-2009. We find that the validity of Wagner's law is likely to vary strongly over time for each country. A roughly similar feature in most of the countries is that the law is less valid in the earliest stage of economic development as well as in the advanced stages, with the validity tending to follow an inverted U-shaped pattern with economic development. Further, our results indicate that the long-run growth of government size cannot be adequately explained by Wagner's law. On the other hand, the displacement effect appears to account for the bulk of the growth in most of the countries.

Suggested Citation

  • Funashima, Yoshito, 2015. "Wagner's law versus displacement effect," MPRA Paper 68390, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:68390
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/68390/1/MPRA_paper_68390.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Durevall, Dick & Henrekson, Magnus, 2011. "The futile quest for a grand explanation of long-run government expenditure," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(7-8), pages 708-722, August.
    2. Brückner, Markus & Chong, Alberto & Gradstein, Mark, 2012. "Estimating the permanent income elasticity of government expenditures: Evidence on Wagner's law based on oil price shocks," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(11), pages 1025-1035.
    3. Mauro, Paolo & Romeu, Rafael & Binder, Ariel & Zaman, Asad, 2015. "A modern history of fiscal prudence and profligacy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 55-70.
    4. Tsangyao Chang & WenRong Liu & Steven Caudill, 2004. "A re-examination of Wagner's law for ten countries based on cointegration and error-correction modelling techniques," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(8), pages 577-589.
    5. Serena Lamartina & Andrea Zaghini, 2011. "Increasing Public Expenditure: Wagner's Law in OECD Countries," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 12(2), pages 149-164, May.
    6. Shelton, Cameron A., 2007. "The size and composition of government expenditure," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(11-12), pages 2230-2260, December.
    7. Alan T. Peacock & Jack Wiseman, 1961. "The Growth of Public Expenditure in the United Kingdom," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number peac61-1.
    8. Anisul Islam, 2001. "Wagner's law revisited: cointegration and exogeneity tests for the USA," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 8(8), pages 509-515.
    9. Oxley, Les, 1994. "Cointegration, Causality and Wagner's Law: A Test for Britain 1870-1913," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 41(3), pages 286-298, August.
    10. Lawrence J. Christiano & Terry J. Fitzgerald, 2003. "The Band Pass Filter," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 44(2), pages 435-465, May.
    11. Sunday Osaretin Iyare & Troy Lorde, 2004. "Co-integration, causality and Wagner's law: tests for selected Caribbean countries," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(13), pages 815-825.
    12. Jan Kuckuck, 2014. "Testing Wagner's Law at Different Stages of Economic Development," FinanzArchiv: Public Finance Analysis, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 70(1), pages 128-168, March.
    13. Meltzer, Allan H & Richard, Scott F, 1981. "A Rational Theory of the Size of Government," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 89(5), pages 914-927, October.
    14. Aguiar-Conraria, Luís & Martins, Manuel M.F. & Soares, Maria Joana, 2012. "The yield curve and the macro-economy across time and frequencies," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 36(12), pages 1950-1970.
    15. Marczak, Martyna & Gómez, Víctor, 2015. "Cyclicality of real wages in the USA and Germany: New insights from wavelet analysis," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 40-52.
    16. Ying-Foon Chow & John Cotsomitis & Andy Kwan, 2002. "Multivariate cointegration and causality tests of Wagner's hypothesis: evidence from the UK," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(13), pages 1671-1677.
    17. António Rua, 2012. "Money Growth and Inflation in the Euro Area: A Time-Frequency View," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 74(6), pages 875-885, December.
    18. John Thornton, 1999. "Cointegration, causality and Wagner's Law in 19th century Europe," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 6(7), pages 413-416.
    19. Luís Aguiar-Conraria & Maria Joana Soares, 2014. "The Continuous Wavelet Transform: Moving Beyond Uni- And Bivariate Analysis," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(2), pages 344-375, April.
    20. Peacock, Alan & Scott, Alex, 2000. "The Curious Attraction of Wagner's Law," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 102(1-2), pages 1-17, January.
    21. Gabriella Legrenzi, 2004. "The Displacement Effect in the Growth of Governments," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 120(1_2), pages 191-204, July.
    22. Tsangyao Chang, 2002. "An econometric test of Wagner's law for six countries based on cointegration and error-correction modelling techniques," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(9), pages 1157-1169.
    23. Akitoby, Bernardin & Clements, Benedict & Gupta, Sanjeev & Inchauste, Gabriela, 2006. "Public spending, voracity, and Wagner's law in developing countries," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 908-924, December.
    24. Lall, Sanjaya, 1969. "A Note on Government Expenditures in Developing Countries," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 79(314), pages 413-417, June.
    25. North, Douglass C & Wallis, John Joseph, 1982. "American Government Expenditures: A Historical Perspective," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 72(2), pages 336-340, May.
    26. Robert J. Barro & Jose F. Ursua, 2008. "Macroeconomic Crises since 1870," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 39(1 (Spring), pages 255-350.
    27. Singh, Balvir & Sahni, Balbir S, 1984. "Causality between Public Expenditure and National Income," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 66(4), pages 630-644, November.
    28. Narayan, Seema & Rath, Badri Narayan & Narayan, Paresh Kumar, 2012. "Evidence of Wagner's law from Indian states," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 29(5), pages 1548-1557.
    29. Alberto Iniguez-Montiel, 2010. "Government expenditure and national income in Mexico: Keynes versus Wagner," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(9), pages 887-893.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Yoshito Funashima, 2017. "Wagner’s law versus displacement effect," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(7), pages 619-634, February.
    2. Philip Arestis & Hüseyin Şen & Ayşe Kaya, 2021. "On the linkage between government expenditure and output: empirics of the Keynesian view versus Wagner’s law," Economic Change and Restructuring, Springer, vol. 54(2), pages 265-303, May.
    3. Yoshito Funashima & Kazuki Hiraga, 2017. "Wagner’s law, fiscal discipline, and intergovernmental transfer: empirical evidence at the US and German state levels," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 24(4), pages 652-677, August.
    4. Marco Gallegati & Massimo Tamberi, 2022. "Long swings in the growth of government expenditure: an international historical perspective," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 192(3), pages 227-248, September.
    5. Omoshoro-Jones, Oyeyinka Sunday, 2016. "A Cointegration and Causality Test on Government Expenditure –Economic Growth Nexus: Empirical Evidence from a South African Province," MPRA Paper 102085, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 17 Oct 2017.
    6. Dimitrios Paparas & Christian Richter & Ioannis Kostakis, 2019. "The validity of Wagner’s Law in the United Kingdom during the Last Two Centuries," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 16(2), pages 269-291, April.
    7. Funashima, Yoshito & Hiraga, Kazuki, 2016. "Wagner's law, fiscal discipline, and intergovernmental transfer: Empirical evidence at the U.S. and German state levels," MPRA Paper 73551, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Magazzino, Cosimo, 2012. "Wagner versus Keynes: Public spending and national income in Italy," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 34(6), pages 890-905.
    9. Cavicchioli, Maddalena & Pistoresi, Barbara, 2016. "Testing threshold cointegration in Wagner's Law: The role of military spending," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 23-31.
    10. Durevall, Dick & Henrekson, Magnus, 2011. "The futile quest for a grand explanation of long-run government expenditure," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(7-8), pages 708-722, August.
    11. Emmanuel Ziramba, 2008. "Wagner'S Law: An Econometric Test For South Africa, 1960‐2006," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 76(4), pages 596-606, December.
    12. Magazzino, Cosimo, 2010. "Wagner's law and augmented Wagner's law in EU-27. A time-series analysis on stationarity, cointegration and causality," MPRA Paper 26668, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Dimitrios Sideris, 2007. "Wagner's Law in 19th Century Greece: A Cointegration and Causality Analysis," Working Papers 64, Bank of Greece.
    14. Narayan, Paresh Kumar & Nielsen, Ingrid & Smyth, Russell, 2008. "Panel data, cointegration, causality and Wagner's law: Empirical evidence from Chinese provinces," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 19(2), pages 297-307, June.
    15. Manuel Jaén-García, 2021. "Displacement Effect and Ratchet Effect: Testing of Two Alternative Hypotheses," SAGE Open, , vol. 11(1), pages 21582440211, March.
    16. Francois Facchini, 2018. "What Are the Determinants of Public Spending? An Overview of the Literature," Atlantic Economic Journal, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 46(4), pages 419-439, December.
    17. Pistoresi, Barbara & Rinaldi, Alberto & Salsano, Francesco, 2017. "Government spending and its components in Italy, 1862–2009: Drivers and policy implications," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 39(6), pages 1117-1140.
    18. Barbara Pistoresi & Alberto Rinaldi & Francesco Salsano, 2015. "Government expenditure and economic development: evidence from Italy 1862-2009," Department of Economics 0065, University of Modena and Reggio E., Faculty of Economics "Marco Biagi".
    19. Irandoust, Manuchehr, 2019. "Wagner on government spending and national income: A new look at an old relationship," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 41(4), pages 636-646.
    20. Manuel Jaén-García, 2018. "Wagner’s Law: A Revision and a New Empirical Estimation," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 224(1), pages 13-35, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Size of public sector; Wagner's law; Economic development; Displacement effect; Wavelet;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory
    • H50 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - General
    • N40 - Economic History - - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation - - - General, International, or Comparative

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:pra:mprapa:68390. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.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.