Country Size and Public Good Provision

Klaas Staal ()
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Klaas Staal: Faculty of Economics, Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam

No 04-026/1, Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers from Tinbergen Institute

Abstract: This paper studies the equilibrium size of countries. Individuals in smallcountries have greater influence over the nature of political decision mak-ing while individuals in large countries have the advantage of more publicgoods and lower tax rates. The model implies that (i) there exists excessiveincentives to separate, though this need not be the case for all sets of seces-sion rules studied; (ii) an exogenous increase in public spending decreasescountry size; (iii) countries with a presidential-congressional democracy arelarger than countries with a parliamentary democracy.

Keywords: country size; public spending; structure of government (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D7 H1 H2 H7 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-03-02
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tin:wpaper:20040026

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