How “Big” Should Government Be?

Antonio Afonso and Ludger Schuknecht

No 2019/78, Working Papers REM from ISEG - Lisbon School of Economics and Management, REM, Universidade de Lisboa

Abstract: We assess how “big” government should reasonably be in a number of advanced countries. First, we will link the recent findings of Data Envelope Analysis on efficient public expenditure with the question of the size of the government. Second, we report descriptive analysis of various government performance indicators in relation to public expenditure to provide indications of overall “optimal” across spending categories. In principle, the highest savings potential is in the biggest expenditure categories, public consumption and social expenditure.

Keywords: government size; government efficiency; DEA; advanced economies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C14 E62 H11 H50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac, nep-pbe and nep-pub
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Working Paper: How “big” should government be? (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ise:remwps:wp0782019

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