Theorizing About the Growth of Government: A Research Assessment

Larkey, Patrick D.; Stolp, Chandler; Winer, Mark

doi:10.1017/s0143814x00001483

Cited by 82 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 125 publications

(45 reference statements)

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“…In the second subsection this procedure is repeated for the supply side. The exposition of the different theories will be held extremely brief and those who are looking for a more complete account of the theories are referred to some of the good survey articles of the field, notably Larkey, Stolp and Winer (1981) and Borcherding (1985).…”

Section: Independent Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Explaining the growth of government in Sweden: A disequilibrium approach

Henrekson

Lybeck

1988

Public Choice

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Section: Independent Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The matter has been treated by economists as well as political scientists with mixed results. Six years have now elapsed since Larkey, Stolp and Winer's (1981) extensive survey of the field. Their bibliography listed no fewer than 393 references and since then a large number of books and articles have continued to appear.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Explaining the growth of government in Sweden: A disequilibrium approach

Henrekson

Lybeck

1988

Public Choice

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“…Recent surveys of parts of this literature (Peacock, 1979;Cameron, 1978;and Larkey, Stolp and Winer, 1981) show that neither theoretical nor empirical work has resolved the main issues. (See also Peltzman, 1980.)…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recent surveys discuss tests of Wagner's law applied to different areas of government activity (Cameron, 1978;Larkey, Stolp and Winer, 1981).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Tests of a rational theory of the size of government

Meltzer¹,

Richard²

1983

Public Choice

288

138

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The extensive literature on the size and growth of government attests to the long-standing interest of social scientists in the interrelations of economic development, income distribution, political processes, bureaucracy, and tax rates. Recent surveys of parts of this literature (Peacock, 1979;Cameron, 1978;and Larkey, Stolp and Winer, 1981) show that neither theoretical nor empirical work has resolved the main issues. (See also Peltzman, 1980.) There is little agreement about a common model or framework for predicting the size of government or discussing the causes of government growth or decline. And there is no consensus about the empirical evidence on the reasons for changes in the size of government.The disputes are not about the relevant facts for the twentieth century. Nutter (1978) shows that if the average size of government is measured by either the share of income taken in taxes or spent by government, the size of government has increased in all developed, market economies during the past quarter century. Growth is not a recent phenomenon. Data for the average tax rate or government's share of spending suggest that, judged by these measures, the size of government increased also during the first half of the century in several countries.Many explanations of the increased size of government emphasize the role of 'suppliers' of government services. Several recent studies (Romer and Rosenthal, 1978;Niskanen, 1971;Fiorina and Noll, 1978) suggest that there is an element of monopoly power on the supply side.1 Congress, bureaucrats, or 'interest groups' are able to raise government spending above the level that utility maximizing households or voters would choose in the absence of this monopoly power. Models of this kind posit some explicit or implicit cost of acquiring information or taking action and reject the stylized model of the fully informed maximizing voter. Models of 'supply' usually exclude the combined effects of taxes and spending on voters' choices by omitting the * We wish to acknowledge the issistance of Joshua Angrist in compiling the data used in our tests and the helpful advice of Dennis Epple. Thanks also to Peter Aranson for helpful comments in the editing process. GSIA, Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213.

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“…Aspects of the loss of revenues are treated in Bonnefous and Blanc (1980). The determinants of expenditure growth are treated in a large literature summarized in Larkey, Stolp and Winer ( 1981 ). On the growth of deficits in public finance, see Biedenkopf and Miegel (1979), Lang and Koch (1980) and Simmert and Wagner (1981).…”

Section: Guardians and Advocates In An Era Of Retrenchmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

The scissors crisis in public finance

Tarschys

1983

Policy Sci

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The late 1970s saw the beginnings of a "scissors crisis" in public finance, i.e., a growing divergence between the expansion of government revenues and the increase in government expenditures. Unless strong measures are taken, the 1980s threaten to become the age of mega-deficits. The sluggish growth of public receipts and the buoyant development of public outlays are linked to a number of structural tendencies in the economies of the industrialized world. Efforts to close the gap have included both tax increases and expenditure cuts, but as more and more governments gain experience with the phenomenon of "fiscal cannibalism," i.e., that taxes eat up each other, the main thrust of the counter-offensive has come to be directed against the growth of public spending. Current strategies to reinforce expenditures control include such elements as global norms, new indexing techniques, new methods of decentralizing hard choices, better methods of cash management, well-balanced policy packages, and incentives especially designed to stimulate cutbacks and policy termination.

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Theorizing About the Growth of Government: A Research Assessment

Cited by 82 publications

References 125 publications

Explaining the growth of government in Sweden: A disequilibrium approach

Explaining the growth of government in Sweden: A disequilibrium approach

Tests of a rational theory of the size of government

The scissors crisis in public finance

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