The bigger the better? Evidence of the effect of government size on life satisfaction around the world

Christian Bjørnskov, Axel Dreher and Justina A. V. Fischer

Public Choice, 2007, vol. 130, issue 3, 267-292

Abstract: This paper empirically analyzes whether government size is conducive or detrimental to life satisfaction in a cross-section of 74 countries. We thus provide a test of the longstanding dispute between standard neoclassical economic theory and public choice theory. According to the neoclassical view, governments play unambiguously positive roles for individuals' quality of life, while the theory of public choice has been developed to understand why governments often choose excessive involvement in – and regulation of – the economy, thereby harming their citizens' quality of life. Our results show that life satisfaction decreases with higher government consumption. For low, middle income, and male people, this result is stronger when the government is leftwing, while government consumption appears to be less harmful for women when the government is perceived to be effective. Government capital formation and social spending have no significant impact on life satisfaction. Copyright Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2007

Keywords: Life satisfaction; Government (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (135)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11127-006-9081-5 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: The bigger the better? Evidence of the effect of government size on life satisfaction around the world (2005)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:130:y:2007:i:3:p:267-292

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ce/journal/11127/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11127-006-9081-5

Access Statistics for this article

Public Choice is currently edited by WIlliam F. Shughart II

More articles in Public Choice from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().