Many parts of the public sector coexist with private provision of similar services and in such circumstances we may expect to find interaction between public and private choices. Quality of publicly provided services will be a central influence on decisions whether to make use of private...

This paper carries out a critical reappraisal of the two contending theories purporting to explain long-run government spending: Wagner’s Law and different variants of the ratchet effect. We analyze data spanning from the early 19th century until the present day in Sweden and the United...