Since 1960, the size ofthe government in Liberia has grown considerably, while the rate of economic growth has declined. This study investigates whether growth in government size promotes or retards economic growth. The studyfinds that growth in the size ofgovernment has been associated with a slowdown in economic growth in Liberia over the period 196086. Thus, a lesser role ofgovernment in eco...

Article history: Received 21 June 2009 Received in revised form 6 April 2010 Accepted 27 June 2010 Available online 29 July 2010 Rational choice models predict that political competition and political participation have opposite effects on the size of government. We investigate these theories using data from a panel of 18 Latin American countries during the 20th century. Our research builds evi...

This paper re-examines the relationship between government size and output volatility from two perspectives. First, we use a wider international data set of 91 countries over the period 1980-1999 and thus not only the OECD data that have thus far been utilized. Second, we also allow for time series aspect by using panel data estimations. We have two new findings. First, the results from OECD co...

Despite an attempt by its own authors, it is difficult to argue that the influential model of the size of government developed by Meltzer and Richard (1981) has had convincing empirical backing. In this paper, we adapt that model to a model of state government size. The main testable hypothesis is that as income inequality grows, government size (as measured by the percentage of income devoted ...