{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,25]],"date-time":"2026-04-25T11:22:53Z","timestamp":1777116173602,"version":"3.51.4"},"reference-count":66,"publisher":"Emerald","issue":"2","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2019,3,4]],"date-time":"2019-03-04T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1551657600000},"content-version":"tdm","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/www.emerald.com\/insight\/site-policies"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["JES"],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2019,3,4]]},"abstract":"<jats:sec><jats:title content-type=\"abstract-subheading\">Purpose<\/jats:title><jats:p>The purpose of this paper is to assess the responses of different categories of government spending to changes in economic activity. In other words, the authors empirically revisit the validation of the Wagner\u2019s law in a sample of 61 advanced and emerging market economies between 1995 and 2015.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type=\"abstract-subheading\">Design\/methodology\/approach<\/jats:title><jats:p>The authors do so via panel data instrumental variables and time-series SUR approaches.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type=\"abstract-subheading\">Findings<\/jats:title><jats:p>Evidence from panel data analyses show that the Wagner\u2019s law seems more prevalent in advanced economies and when countries are growing above potential. However, such result depends on the government spending category under scrutiny and the functional form used. Country-specific analysis revealed relatively more cases satisfying Wagner\u2019s proposition within the emerging markets sample. The authors also found evidence of counter-cyclicality in several spending items. All in all, the Wagner\u2019s regularity seems more the exception than the norm.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type=\"abstract-subheading\">Originality\/value<\/jats:title><jats:p>While in the literature on the size of the public sector with respect to a country\u2019s level of economic development has received much attention, the authors make several novel contributions: since some economists criticized Wagner\u2019s law because of ambiguity of the measurement of government expenditure (Musgrave, 1969), instead of looking at aggregate public expenditures, the authors go much more granular into the different functions of government (to this end, the authors use the Classification of Functions of the Government nomenclature). The authors check the validity of the Law via an instrumental variable approach in a panel setting; after that, the authors take into account the phase of the business cycle using a new filtering technique to compute potential GDP (output gap); then, the authors cross-check the baseline results by considering alternative functional form specifications of the Law; and finally, the authors look at individual countries one at the time via SUR analysis.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec>","DOI":"10.1108\/jes-02-2018-0049","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2019,1,23]],"date-time":"2019-01-23T19:10:32Z","timestamp":1548270632000},"page":"446-466","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":16,"title":["Wagner\u2019s law and governments\u2019 functions: granularity matters"],"prefix":"10.1108","volume":"46","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-7171-5076","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Joao","family":"Jalles","sequence":"first","affiliation":[]}],"member":"140","reference":[{"issue":"1","key":"key2020092420245994600_ref001","first-page":"88","article-title":"Relationship between national product and Malaysian government development expenditure: Wagner\u2019s law validity application","volume":"5","year":"2010","journal-title":"International Journal of Business and Management"},{"key":"key2020092420245994600_ref002","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"49","DOI":"10.1016\/S0304-3932(02)00208-8","article-title":"Institutional causes, macroeconomic symptoms: volatility, crises and growth","volume":"50","year":"2003","journal-title":"Journal of Monetary Economics"},{"issue":"17","key":"key2020092420245994600_ref003","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1198","DOI":"10.1080\/13504851.2014.916383","article-title":"Causality for the government budget and economic growth","volume":"21","year":"2014","journal-title":"Applied Economics Letters"},{"issue":"1","key":"key2020092420245994600_ref004","first-page":"12","article-title":"Wagner\u2019s law in Pakistan: another look","volume":"2","year":"2010","journal-title":"Journal of Economics and International Finance"},{"issue":"4","key":"key2020092420245994600_ref005","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"908","DOI":"10.1016\/j.ejpoleco.2005.12.001","article-title":"Public spending, voracity, and wagner\u2019s law in developing countries","volume":"22","year":"2006","journal-title":"European Journal of Political Economy"},{"key":"key2020092420245994600_ref006","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"543","DOI":"10.1080\/000368497327038","article-title":"Keynes versus Wagner: public expenditure and national income for three African countries","volume":"29","year":"1997","journal-title":"Applied Economics"},{"issue":"21","key":"key2020092420245994600_ref007","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2843","DOI":"10.1080\/00036840903425012","article-title":"A bound testing analysis of Wagner\u2019s law in Nigeria: 1970\u20132006","volume":"43","year":"2011","journal-title":"Applied Economics"},{"issue":"3-4","key":"key2020092420245994600_ref008","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"341","DOI":"10.1016\/0165-1765(94)00628-F","article-title":"Level of aggregation, variable elasticity and Wagner\u2019s law","volume":"48","year":"1995","journal-title":"Economics Letters"},{"issue":"59","key":"key2020092420245994600_ref009","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"6409","DOI":"10.1080\/00036846.2015.1071475","article-title":"Did fiscal institutions affect Wagner\u2019s law in Italy during 1951\u20132009 period? 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