We compare the size and structure of the public sectors of Canada and the United States from 1929 to 2004 using national accounting and employment data. The challenge of defining the public sector for comparative purposes is explored and illustrated, especially with respect to the treatment of...

While it is clear that Keynes' General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936) has influenced macroeconomic theory, the extent to which his ideas about countercyclical stabilization have altered the course of public policy remains an open question. We develop a dynamic spatial voting...

This note extends the work of Borcherding, Ferris and Garzoni (2003) on government size by considering how traditional tests respond to alternative definitions of government size. An error correction format is used to show that a) qualitatively all measures of size perform well, b) government...

From at least 1893 economists have viewed income as an important determinant of government size and the hypothesis that government size increases with income is now enshrined in the literature as Wagner's Law. More recently, however, public choice economists and growth theorists have tended to...