This paper is the first to examine the causal relationship between trade openness and government size using both aggregate and disaggregated government expenditure data, including data on social security. Our results indicate that examining the relationship separately for functional categories...

Most of the growth accounting literature relies on an aggregate production function to determine the contribution of factors of production relative to that of total factor productivity (TFP) in explaining differences in incomes across countries. I show that the importance of TFP in accounting...