IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mos/moswps/archive-06.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Optimal Size of Government

Author

Abstract

In the economic analysis of the theory of government, two views of government are evident. The Pigovian view sees government as a benevolent actor striving to correct for the inadequacies and excesses of an unrestrained marketplace. The 'Public Choice' view of government portrays government as the tool of special interest groups as likely to generate distortions as to correct them. In this paper, a model of government that incorporates both views will be developed and then empirically tested.

Suggested Citation

  • Philip J. Grossman, 1987. "The Optimal Size of Government," Monash Economics Working Papers archive-06, Monash University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:mos:moswps:archive-06
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30024739
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Riker, William H. & Brams, Steven J., 1973. "The Paradox of Vote Trading," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 67(4), pages 1235-1247, December.
    2. Peltzman, Sam, 1980. "The Growth of Government," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 23(2), pages 209-287, October.
    3. Peltzman, Sam, 1980. "The Growth of Government," Working Papers 1, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State.
    4. Anthony Downs, 1957. "An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65(2), pages 135-135.
    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. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 2002. "Political economics and public finance," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 24, pages 1549-1659, Elsevier.
    2. Dennis Mueller & Peter Murrell, 1986. "Interest groups and the size of government," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 48(2), pages 125-145, January.
    3. Thomas A. Garrett & Andrew F. Kozak & Russell M. Rhine, 2010. "Institutions and government growth: a comparison of the 1890s and the 1930s," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 92(Mar), pages 109-120.
    4. Thomas A. Garrett & Russell M. Rhine, 2006. "On the size and growth of government," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 88(Jan), pages 13-30.
    5. Mulligan Casey B & Gil Ricard & Sala-i-Martin Xavier X, 2010. "Social Security and Democracy," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 10(1), pages 1-46, March.
    6. Mulligan, Casey B. & Gil Sala-I-Martin X., Ricard, 2002. "Social Security and Democracy," Working Papers 180, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State.
    7. James Kau & Paul Rubin, 1981. "The size of government," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 37(2), pages 261-274, January.
    8. Chang, Alex Chuan-hsien, 2018. "How do Asian values constrain public support for redistribution?," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 139-150.
    9. Matsusaka, John G, 2000. "Fiscal Effects of the Voter Initiative in the First Half of the Twentieth Century," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 43(2), pages 619-650, October.
    10. John E. Filer & Donald L. Moak & Barry Uze, 1988. "Why Some States Adopt Lotteries and others Don'T," Public Finance Review, , vol. 16(3), pages 259-283, July.
    11. Mwangi Kimenyi & William Shughart, 1989. "Political successions and the growth of government," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 62(2), pages 173-179, August.
    12. 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.
    13. Allan Meltzer & Scott Richard, 1983. "Tests of a rational theory of the size of government," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 41(3), pages 403-418, January.
    14. Steven Pressman, 2004. "What is wrong with public choice," Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(1), pages 3-18.
    15. Gerald Scully, 1989. "The size of the state, economic growth and the efficient utilization of national resources," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 63(2), pages 149-164, November.
    16. Randall G. Holcombe, 1993. "Are There Ratchets in the Growth of Federal Government Spending?," Public Finance Review, , vol. 21(1), pages 33-47, January.
    17. Ernesto Dal Bo, 2000. "Bribing Voters," Economics Series Working Papers 39, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    18. Randall Holcombe, 2005. "Government growth in the twenty-first century," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 124(1), pages 95-114, July.
    19. Henrik Jacobsen Kleven & Claus Thustrup Kreiner & Emmanuel Saez, 2016. "Why Can Modern Governments Tax So Much? An Agency Model of Firms as Fiscal Intermediaries," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 83(330), pages 219-246, April.
    20. Birdsall, Nancy & James, Estelle, 1992. "Health, government, and the poor : the case for the private sector," Policy Research Working Paper Series 938, The World Bank.

    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:mos:moswps:archive-06. 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: Simon Angus (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dxmonau.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.