Publisher's Synopsis
The expansion of government activity during the post-war period and the heavy reliance on deficit financing have generated a strong backlash from taxpayers. Governments have become convinced that the size of the public sector has exceeded the willingness of voter/taxpayers to finance it. This monograph provides some empirical foundations for the debate on whether the government has become too big and if so, whether this is the result of recent growth in government spending. It sheds some light on the current debate on government spending and provides some guidance for the design of policies involving the redefining of government. Distinguishing between scope and size of government, the authors conclude that the size of government, determined by the amount of resources transferred from the private to the public sector, has increased little during the past two decades. What did expand during the past twenty years was the scope of government, primarily because of the rapid growth of transfers since 1961. The expansion of transfer payments was due primarily to demographic and cyclical factors.
