IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mil/wpdepa/2001-13.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A logistic growth law for government expenditures: an explanatory analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Massimo Florio
  • Sara Colautti

Abstract

Wagner's Law would imply an exponential growth process of the ratio between public expenditures and national income (G/Y). However the law may be rejected both on theoretical and empirical reasons, because it disregards the role of ever increasing distortionary taxation. But, under someconditions, the combination of Wagner's Law and the Pigou's conjecture that the excess burden oftaxation constraints the growth of public expenditures, may be captured by a non-linear first orderdifferential equation. The equation is the Verhulst's logistic, originally invented to model althusian predictions on population growth. The integration of a Verhulst equation generates a S-shaped curve and preliminary econometric estimates on very long run trends (around 1870-2000) of G/Y in US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden seem to confirm similar logistic trajectories, in spite of different individual parameters.

Suggested Citation

  • Massimo Florio & Sara Colautti, 2001. "A logistic growth law for government expenditures: an explanatory analysis," Departmental Working Papers 2001-13, Department of Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods at Università degli Studi di Milano.
    • Handle: RePEc:mil:wpdepa:2001-13
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://wp.demm.unimi.it/files/wp/2001/DEMM-2001_013wp.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Feldstein, Martin, 1997. "How Big Should Government Be?," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 50(2), pages 197-213, June.
    2. 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.
    3. Ludger Schuknecht & Mr. Vito Tanzi, 1995. "The Growth of Government and the Reform of the State in Industrial Countries," IMF Working Papers 1995/130, International Monetary Fund.
    4. Feldstein, Martin, 1997. "How Big Should Government Be?," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 50(2), pages 197-213, June.
    5. A. Dale Tussing & John A. Henning, 1974. "Long-Run Growth of Nondefense Government Expenditures in the United States," Public Finance Review, , vol. 2(2), pages 202-222, April.
    6. Willi Leibfritz & John Thornton & Alexandra Bibbee, 1997. "Taxation and Economic Performance," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 176, OECD Publishing.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Magazzino, Cosimo, 2010. "Wagner's law and Italian disaggregated public spending: some empirical evidences," MPRA Paper 26662, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Cosimo Magazzino, 2012. "The Nexus between Disaggregated Public Spending and GDP in the Euro Area," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 32(3), pages 2560-2579.
    3. Magazzino, Cosimo, 2011. "The nexus between public expenditure and inflation in the Mediterranean countries," MPRA Paper 28493, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Magazzino, Cosimo, 2012. "Wagner versus Keynes: Public spending and national income in Italy," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 34(6), pages 890-905.

    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. Massimo Florio & Sara Colautti, 2005. "A logistic growth theory of public expenditures: A study of five countries over 100 years," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 122(3), pages 355-393, March.
    2. Slemrod, Joel, 1998. "Methodological Issues in Measuring and Interpreting Taxable Income Elasticities," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 51(n. 4), pages 773-88, December.
    3. Ming Chung Chang & Shufen Wu, 2011. "Should Marginal Cost of Public Funds include the Revenue Effect?," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 147(I), pages 1-16, March.
    4. Shih‐Ying Wu, 2005. "The Tax Effect on Taxable Income from Privately Held Businesses," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 71(4), pages 891-912, April.
    5. Santos, Marcelo Rodrigues dos & Pereira, Thiago Neves, 2010. "Moving to a Consumption-Based Tax System: A Quantitative Assessment for Brazil," Revista Brasileira de Economia - RBE, EPGE Brazilian School of Economics and Finance - FGV EPGE (Brazil), vol. 64(2), June.
    6. Ian W.H. Parry & Antonio M. Bento, 2002. "Tax Deductions, Environmental Policy, and the "Double Dividend" Hypothesis," Chapters, in: Lawrence H. Goulder (ed.), Environmental Policy Making in Economies with Prior Tax Distortions, chapter 22, pages 397-426, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    7. Ferdi Celikay, 2020. "Dimensions of tax burden: a review on OECD countries," Journal of Economics, Finance and Administrative Science, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 25(49), pages 27-43, March.
    8. Mickaël Beaud & Thierry Blayac & Patrice Bougette & Soufiane Khoudmi & Philippe Mahenc & Stéphane Mussard, 2013. "Estimation du coût d'opportunité des fonds publics pour l'économie française," Working Papers halshs-01077141, HAL.
    9. Salvador Barrios & Jonathan Pycroft & Bert Saveyn, 2013. "The marginal cost of public funds in the EU: the case of labour versus green taxes," Taxation Papers 35, Directorate General Taxation and Customs Union, European Commission.
    10. Parry, Ian & Bento, Antonio, 1999. "Tax Deductible Spending, Environmental Policy, and the "Double Dividend" Hypothesis," RFF Working Paper Series dp-99-24, Resources for the Future.
    11. Frits Bos & Thomas van der Pol & Gerbert Romijn, 2018. "Should CBA’s include a correction for the marginal excess burden of taxation?," CPB Discussion Paper 370.rdf, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    12. Will Martin & James E. Anderson, 2005. "Costs of Taxation and the Benefits of Public Goods: The Role of Income Effects," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 617, Boston College Department of Economics.
    13. Uriel Spiegel & Joseph Templeman & Tchai Tavor, 2010. "The Effects of Excise Taxes on Non-Homogeneous Populations," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 55(2), pages 36-45, November.
    14. Liqun Liu & Andrew J. Rettenmaier, 2004. "The Excess Burden of the Social Security Payroll Tax," Public Finance Review, , vol. 32(6), pages 631-650, November.
    15. Piotr Ciżkowicz & Andrzej Rzońca, 2011. "Mechanizmy oddziaływania deficytu fiskalnego na wzrost gospodarki," Gospodarka Narodowa. The Polish Journal of Economics, Warsaw School of Economics, issue 10, pages 1-20.
    16. Aidan R. Vining & David L. Weimer, 2013. "An assessment of important issues concerning the application of benefit–cost analysis to social policy," Chapters, in: Scott O. Farrow & Richard Zerbe, Jr. (ed.), Principles and Standards for Benefit–Cost Analysis, chapter 1, pages 25-62, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    17. Hoel, Michael, 2008. "Environmental Taxes in an Economy with Distorting Taxes and a Heterogeneous Population," Memorandum 04/2008, Oslo University, Department of Economics.
    18. Slemrod, Joel & Yitzhaki, Shlomo, 2001. "Integrating Expenditure and Tax Decisions: The Marginal Cost of Funds and the Marginal Benefit of Projects," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 54(2), pages 189-202, June.
    19. Michael Spackman, 2013. "Government Time Discounting and Required Rates of Return: UK History and Current Issues," Economic Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(2), pages 190-206, June.
    20. Wendner, Ronald & Goulder, Lawrence H., 2008. "Status effects, public goods provision, and excess burden," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(10-11), pages 1968-1985, October.

    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:mil:wpdepa:2001-13. 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: DEMM Working Papers (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/damilit.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.