What is th public sector?; What is the most appropriate - time-series or cross-section analysis?; choosing among potential explanations; a broad overview of the development of government spending from 1800 to 1987; the purpose and outline of this volume. Part 1 Studies of the very long run: Wagner's Law - wagner's writings, how can the Law be tested? results of previous tests, the econometric methodology, empirical analysis; the peacock and the Wiseman displacement effect - the displacement hypothesis, a review of previous empirical tests, a critical assessment of the empirical tests, the empirical test, a test of an alternative explanation. Part 2 Explaining the postwar growth: what are the facts to be explained?; is the public sector demand-determined? - the demand model, results, the growth of the public consumption and the productivity disparity hypothesis; introducing the supply side: Baumol's disease - the model, data considerations, results; potential explanations for the growth of government - demand-side explanations, supply-side explanations; model and estimation method - the demand side, the supply side, the integrated model, estimation method, procedure applied to eliminate independant variables; regression results - results for GDP-related measures of government, for elasticity estimates of government growth, a comparison of the results for government consumption and transfers, of the results for the relative and absolute measures of government.
