Explanations for the growth of the government that imply that it always grows are obviously destroyed by the early period histories. Something must have happened to change the way in which we respond to our governments or our governments respond to us. I have offered Bismarckism as a possible...

New indicators measuring the effects of public spending on inclusive growth have been constructed using recent empirical work by Fournier and Johansson (2016) and a recent public finance dataset (Bloch et al., 2016). A first set of indicators combines information on the mix of public spending....