Working Paper Series,
Research Institute of Industrial Economics

Abstract: While previous research documents a negative relationship between government size and economic growth, suggesting an economic cost of big government, a given government size generally affects growth differently in different countries. As a possible explanation of this differential effect, we explore whether perceived government legitimacy (measured by satisfaction with the way democracy works) influences how a certain government size affects growth. On the positive side, a legitimate government may “get away” with being big since legitimacy can affect people’s behavioral response to, and therefore the economic growth cost of, taxation and government expenditures. On the negative side, legitimacy may make voters less prone to acquire information, which in turn facilitates interest-group oriented or populist policies that harm growth. A panel-data analysis of up to 30 developed countries, in which two different measures of the size of government are interacted with government legitimacy, reveals that legitimacy exacerbates a negative growth effect of government size in the long run. This could be interpreted as governments taking advantage of legitimacy in order to secure short-term support at a long-term cost to the economy.

Keywords: Legitimacy; Economic growth; Size of government; Confidence; Trust

JEL-codes: E62; H11; H20; O43; Z13

30 pages, October 30, 2014

Full text files

wp1045.pdf  

Download statistics

Published as

Niclas Berggren, Christian Bjørnskov and David Lipka, (2015), 'Legitimacy and the Cost of Government', Public Choice, vol 162, no 3-4, pages 307-328

• Research Institute of Industrial Economics
• Ordering Working Papers
• Home page for this series

Questions (including download problems) about the papers in this series should be directed to Elisabeth Gustafsson ()
Report other problems with accessing this service to Sune Karlsson ().

RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:1045This page generated on 2024-09-13 22:15:50.