New insights into the growth-maximizing size of government: evidence and implications for Turkey

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Tarih

2023

Dergi Başlığı

Dergi ISSN

Cilt Başlığı

Yayıncı

Springer

Erişim Hakkı

info:eu-repo/semantics/closedAccess

Özet

This paper provides new insights into the growth-maximizing size of government in Turkey. Unlike previous studies that traditionally use the share of government spending in GDP as a proxy variable of government size, in this paper we consider a fairly large number of proxy variables ranging from the share of tax revenues in GDP to the share of public investment in total investment. After reviewing the potential non-linear relationship between government size and growth, we estimate various thresholds for government size that maximize growth. To this end, we use the threshold autoregressive model proposed by Hansen (1996: 413-430; 2000: 575-603)) and apply it to Turkey's annual time-series data for the period from 1974 to 2019. Overall, we arrive at the following main result: Government size is non-linearly related to growth, confirming the existence of a growth-maximizing threshold for any measure of government size, beyond which growth tends to slow down as government size continues to increase. More precisely, the results show that the estimated thresholds for government size lie within the range of 4.28-15.19%, depending on the definition or proxy variable representing government size.

Açıklama

Anahtar Kelimeler

Government size; Economic growth; Thresholds for government size; Turkey

Kaynak

Economic Change and Restructuring

WoS Q Değeri

Q1

Scopus Q Değeri

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Cilt

56

Sayı

4

Künye