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COMPULSORY VOTING AND GOVERNMENT SPENDING
Author(s) -
O'Toole Francis,
Strobl Eric
Publication year - 1995
Publication title -
economics and politics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1468-0343
pISSN - 0954-1985
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0343.1995.tb00115.x
Subject(s) - government spending , government (linguistics) , voting , consumption (sociology) , government expenditure , public economics , economics , scale (ratio) , government revenue , public finance , welfare , political science , macroeconomics , politics , law , sociology , market economy , social science , linguistics , philosophy , physics , quantum mechanics
Crain and Leonard (1993) examine the effects of compulsory voting on the scale of government spending. The purpose of this comment is twofold. First, problems in the Grain and Leonard's approach are identified. The choice of government consumption, rather than expenditure, as representative of government spending is inappropriate and the classification of non‐voters as net beneficiaries of government spending is questionable. Second, the composition of government expenditure is examined. Cross‐country data tentatively suggests that voters benefit, relative to non‐voters, from government expenditures on defence and economic services while non‐voters benefit from government expenditure on health.