Wagner's hypothesis: evidence from Kuwait using cointegration tests

Abstract

This paper investigates the relationship between public expenditure and a number of socioeconomic variables, including the level of income, in Kuwait. A general form of the public expenditure function is formulated and recent developments in time series econometrics, including unit roots and cointegration tests, and an error-correction model are used. Given the characteristics of the economy, alternative measures for each variables are used. The analysis in the paper is based on time-series data covering the period from 1969/70 to 1994/95. In general, the findings lend little support to the existence of long-run equilibrium relationship between public expenditure and the socioeconomic variables, and the evidence does not lend support to the validity of Wagner's law in Kuwait.