Tax revenue, expenditure, and economic growth: an analysis of long run relationships

Abstract

Focusing on the investigation of “long-term” relationship between tax revenue, expenditure, and economic growth, this paper employs the Granger causality test and finds that the linkage between tax revenue and spending is a bi-directional causal correlation. Furthermore, applying Persyn and Westerlund’s (2008) co-integration test allows for corroboration of existence of long-run cointegration linkages among outcome of economy and the three variables. In addition, by adopting two-step system generalized method of moments (SGMM) for a dynamic panel of 82 developed and developing countries during 16-year period (2000–2015), this research demonstrates that the impact of tax revenue and spending is substantial and ambiguous, depending on different groups of economies.