The relationship between public expenditure and aggregate income has long been debated in economic literature. According to Wagner, expenditure is an endogenous factor or an outcome. On the other hand, Keynes considered public expenditure as an exogenous factor to be used as a policy instrument...

Wagner’s Law is the first model of public spending in the history of public finance. The aim of this article is to assess its empirical evidence in Italy for the period 1960-2008 at a disaggregated level, using a time-series approach. After a brief introduction, a survey of the economic...

Using time-series techniques and panels data, the paper analyses for the EU countries in the period 1970-2009 the existence and shape of the “BARS curve” (Barro, Armey, Rahn, and Scully), connecting the size of Government (measured by the share of public expenditure on GDP) to the rate of...

This study examines the long-run equilibrium relationship between government expenditure and revenue in Italy from 1862 to 1993, using cointegration techniques and the direction of causality relationship in the long and short runs between the variables through integrating the Error Correction...

This essay will critically evaluate positions that have emerged in the literature in favor of the welfare state. The downsizing of the welfare state, which would, inter alia, to reduce government spending, provide greater scope for the free market. The transition from a welfare system to a...

This study analyzes the negative performance of Calabria’s Regional Program 2000-2006, for the enhancement of cultural goods to attract tourism, as an example of the waste of resources of EU ambitious planning for the economic convergence. The empirical analysis shows that the variables...

“Reaganomics” is a popular term used to refer to the economic policies of Ronald W. Reagan, the 40th U.S. President (1981–1989), which called for widespread tax cuts, decreased social spending, increased military spending, and the deregulation of domestic markets. In this paper, we analyze...

The aim of this article is to assess the empirical evidence of the nexus between public expenditure and inflation for the Mediterranean countries during the period 1970-2009, using a time-series approach. After a brief introduction, a concise survey of the economic literature on this issue is...

The aim of this article is to assess the empirical evidence of the nexus between aggregate income and energy consumption for Italy during the period 1970-2009, using a time-series approach. After a brief introduction, a survey of the economic literature on this issue is shown, before discussing...

“Reaganomics” is a popular term used to refer to the economic policies of Ronald W. Reagan, the 40th U.S. President (1981–1989), which called for widespread tax cuts, decreased social spending, increased military spending, and the deregulation of domestic markets. In this paper, we analyze...