The paper examines empirically the relationship between government revenues and expenditures in four European countries: Greece, Spain, Ireland, and Portugal. In relative terms all four may be considered as the poorest members of the European Union. Yet, they present a fairly diverse picture as...

The factors that have influenced the growth of public expenditures have been the subject of extensive theoretical and empirical research. The validity of Wagner's law in the case of Greece is tested using disaggregated public expenditure data for the period 1958-93. The methodology employed is...