政府支出의 測定 基準에 관한 論爭

Measuring Public Sector Shares in Korea

In recent years, economists have shown interest in measuring the size of government and explaining the main factors which account for its growth. Considerable attention has frequently focused on the relative size of the public sector, the amount of tax raised, the share of government employees in the total labour force, and the means of its control. All these indicators have been commonly used as measures of government’s activity in the economy. However, due to the lack of commonly agreed measure for capturing overall government size, different researchers so far have used particular definitions of these important variables. By introducing various definitions of public expenditure in Korea for the period of 1970-1995. I seek to explain the changes in the level and structure of government activities over the study period. The nominal share of government expenditure to GNP rose slightly; In contrast, real size declined between 1970 and 1995. According to the Korean National Accounts data, the price index of government services rose faster than the price index for GNP. Due to the relative effect, the share of resources used for the public sector has actually declined in Korea over the study period.