A Contribution to the Political Economy of Government Size: 'Demand', 'Supply' and 'Political Influence'

George Tridimas () and Stanley Winer ()
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George Tridimas: School of Economics and Politics University of Ulster, Shore Road, Newtownabbey

No 04-04, Carleton Economic Papers from Carleton University, Department of Economics

Abstract: This paper contributes to the understanding of empirically-oriented work on the size of government by integrating the analysis of three basic elements: (i) the 'demand' for government stemming in part from attempts to coercively redistribute, often analyzed in a median voter framework; (ii) the 'supply' of taxable activities emphasized in Leviathan and other models of taxation; and (iii) the distribution of 'political influence' when influence and economic interests are distinct. The role of the first two factors have been considered in recent empirical studies of government growth by Ferris and West (1996) and Kau and Rubin (2002). Estimates of the effect of unequal political influence on the size of government have been provided by Mueller and Stratmann (2003). We combine all three elements in a spatial voting framework of a sort that has not been well explored, and use the comparative static properties of the integrative model to shed light on the analytical and empirical literatures.

Keywords: size of government; coercive redistribution; home production; political influence; probabilistic voting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D70 H0 H3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2004-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pol
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Published: Carleton Economic Papers

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