This paper presents instrumental variables estimates of the effects of GDP per capita volatility on the size of government. We show that for a panel of 157 countries spanning more than half a century rainfall volatility has a significant positive effect on GDP per capita volatility in countries...

We study how financial transactions may respond to exogenous variation in trade opportunities not only directly, but also through policy channels. In more open economies, governments may find it more difficult to fund and enforce public policies that substitute private financial transactions,...

Abstract: This paper estimates the relationship between various sub-indicators of economic freedom and life satisfaction for 122 countries. The estimation results show that life satisfaction is positively related to the quality of the legal system and protection of property rights. For poor...

Previous studies on tax evasion and government size have not specified the "political mechanism" through which increasing difficulties with tax evasion might lead to government expansion. This paper attempts to fill in the gap. We extend the celebrated Meltzer and Richard (1981) model to a...

Previous studies on the effect of government size on corruption have produced mixed results. For the purpose of explaining these ambiguous results, our study investigates the effect of government size on corruption by taking into account the role of democracy level in each country. Using annual...

This paper uses individual level data (the Japanese General Social Survey) to examine how government size influences generalized trust. After controlling for the endogeneity of government size using instrumental variables, I found: (1) Using all samples, government size is not associated with...

Student achievement has been identified as important contributor to economic growth. This paper investigates the relationship between redistributive government activities and investment in human capital measured by student performance in international comparative tests in Mathematics and Science...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify major macroeconomic factors that enhance foreign direct investment (FDI) for Pakistan through the co‐integration and error correction model over a 28‐year time period, i.e. between 1980 and 2008. Design/methodology/approach – The study...