Title: A synthesis of empirical research on the validity of Wagner's law

Authors: Dimitrios Paparas; Christian Richter

Addresses: Land, Farm and Agribusiness Management Department, Harper Adams University, UK ' Faculty of Management Technology, German University in Cairo, Egypt

Abstract: In this paper we provide a synthesis of empirical research in the validity of Wagner's law of the existing literature for the period 1969-2014. Wagner's law attracted the interest of many authors and is still being discussed by policy makers and economists in relation to government spending expansion since it was applied by Adolph Wagner in the 1880s. Additionally, we will present the previous empirical work in this topic. Since the translation of Wagner's 'law' in 1950s, a large number of authors tested various specifications of the law. All these studies found different empirical results: support, no support or mixed results. Conflicting findings in this field are not surprising because of the diverse theoretical predictions and also because countries may be at different stages of economic development; thus, the debate about the relationship between government spending and economic growth remains an unresolved issue.

Keywords: Wagner's law; causality tests; Greece; long run time series analysis.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBG.2019.100261

International Journal of Business and Globalisation, 2019 Vol.22 No.4, pp.555 - 583

Received: 14 Feb 2017
Accepted: 24 May 2018

Published online: 21 Jun 2019 *

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