瓦格纳在巴尔干？政府规模与经济增长的比较分析（英）

Wagner in the Balkans?A Comparative Analysisof Government Size andEconomic Growth Serhan Cevik and Sharayah Dominguez WP/26/79 2026APR IMF Working Paper European Department Wagner in the Balkans?A Comparative Analysis of Government Size and Economic Growth Prepared by Serhan CevikandSharayahDominguez1 Authorized for distribution byLuc Eyraud April2026 IMF Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit commentsand to encourage debate. The views expressed in IMF Working Papers are those of the author(s) and donot necessarily represent the views of the IMF, itsExecutive Board, or IMF management. Abstract Determining the appropriate size of government remains central for fiscal sustainability, socialprotection, and macroeconomic stability. Wagner’s law, formulated in the 19th century, posits thatgovernment expenditures rise with income, yet contemporary evidence is mixed. This paperrevisits the relationship between economic growth and government spending in Europe over theperiod 1990–2024, with particular attention to the Balkans. Using an instrumental variable strategybased on trade-weighted partner growth, we find no evidence that rising income systematicallyexpands government expenditure. On the contrary, faster growth is associated with modestdeclines in expenditure, particularly for current spending, while capital outlays remain largelyunaffected. These patterns are stronger in high-debt countries, suggesting that fiscal rules anddebt constraints increasingly shape spending decisions. The Balkan economies largely followthese trends, though heterogeneity reflects transition dynamics and EU integration. Our findingsimply that Wagner’s law no longer describes spending behavior in modern European economies.Policymakers should focus less on income-driven expenditure growth and more on strengtheningfiscal frameworks, improving spending efficiency, and prioritizing high-return investments ininfrastructure and human capital. These measures can enhance fiscal resilience while supportingpublic service provision and long-term development goals. I.INTRODUCTION How large should government be? Can it become too large or too small, and what determinesthese thresholds? Is there a systematic relationship between economic development and the sizeof the public sector, or does government expansion primarily reflect historical legacies,institutional constraints, and political choices rather than income growth alone? These questionslie at the heart of debates in public finance, political economy, and development economics,shaping discussions of fiscal sustainability,state capacity, governance quality, and the evolvingrole of government across countries. Over the past two centuries, the growth of government expenditure as a share of nationalincome has been a defining structural transformation of modern economies. Public spending hasexpanded far beyond traditional functions to encompass social protection,health and education,infrastructure, regulation, and a broad array of public services. Yet despite the scale andpersistence of this transformation, there is no consensus on its drivers. Does economicdevelopment inherently generate a larger state? Are there structural limits to public expenditure?And as economies mature, does government size eventually stabilize, continue to expand, orcontract under demographic, institutional, or fiscal pressures? These debates are closely linked to Wagner’s law of increasing state activity, first articulated inthe late nineteenth century. Observing the industrializing economies of Europe, Adolph Wagner(1883) argued that government expenditure tends to rise more than proportionally with nationalincome over the long run. The underlying intuition is that economic development increasesdemand for public goods and services—particularly infrastructure, education, social protection,and regulatory functions—whose incomeelasticity exceeds unity. As societies become wealthierand more complex, the scope and scale of government activity are therefore expected to expand.Sustained economic growth, in this view, should be accompanied by a larger public sector, bothin absolute terms and relative to GDP. Wagner’s proposition has since served as an importantconceptual benchmark for understanding the structural evolution of fiscal systems and continuesto guide empirical research on the determinants of government size.Importantly, Wagner’s proposition is best understood as a historically grounded empirical regularity associated with thestructural transformation from agrarian to industrial economies, rather than as a universal “law”applicable uniformly across all income levels and time periods. Its relevance in contemporarysettings—particularly in advanced economies with already large public sectors and binding fiscalconstraints—therefore remains an open empirical question. Wagner’s framework identifies several mechanisms linking development to governmentexp