دانلود رایگان مقاله تست هم انباشتگی آستانه در قانون واگنر

Abstract

This paper analyses historical data since the mid-19th century to find support for Wagner's Law in the Italian economy. Unlike previous studies, we accommodate possible nonlinear asymmetric effects of government spending and GDP towards their long-run equilibrium. The results reveal a threshold cointegrating relationship between the two variables with significantly different error correction adjustments in normal and extreme regimes. A long-run tendency for the public sector to grow relative to GDP from 1862 to 2009 is observed only when nonlinearities generated by temporary higher military spending during wars are take into account.

7. Conclusion

This paper tests the long-run tendency for Italian total government expenditure to grow relative to per capita GDP over the period 9 Note that our results do not confirm the empirical study by Barro (1981) on temporary increases in US defence spending: in his work these shocks also induce marked increases in output. 1862-2009. Evidence was found for a threshold cointegrating relationship between these variables, which turns out to be consistent with WL, given the different adjustment speeds to the long-run path. Asymmetric error-correction effects identify two different regimes and the WWI and WWII periods perfectly match one of them. The abnormal response of government spending in this “extreme” regime was due to temporary increases in defence spending during the wars. This implies a hyper-adjustment of total government spending to return to the long-run equilibrium. On the basis of these results, we conclude that the model for public spending is basically linear and consistent with an expanding government sector as the economy progresses and the nonlinearities are transitory.