Kamu harcamaları ve ekonomik büyüme arasındaki nedensellik: Türkiye örneği

The argument regarding the relationship between economic growth and public expenditure has been subject to many studies with varying results. Whether the way of causality differs during the crisis period however, is a new strand in the literature. In this study, Wagner's Law and Keynes' Hypothesis were empirically tested employing quarterly time series data for the Turkish economy covering the period 1987-2017. In addition, by considering the effects of economic crises which Turkey has faced throughout the subject period (1994, 2001 and 2008 crises), a new perspective to the existing literature was provided. In this study, Johansen cointegration and VECM methods were used to find the relationship between GDP and public expenditure. In addition, dummy series were employed to represent the economic crises. It was determined that the variables are non-stationary in levels, but stationary in first differences. Johansen cointegration test without any dummies, indicated a negative long-run relationship among the variables. However, only in 2 out of 4 versions with dummies, cointegration relationship has been found. In 2 cases with no cointegration (1994 and 2001 crises), Granger Causality test was utilized to find the causality. The way of causality in these cases was from economic growth to public expenditure. VECM results in all cases, found a long-run causality from public expenditure to economic growth. 2008 global financial crisis alone and all crises (1994, 2001 and 2008 crises) together were found to have negative effect on Turkey's GDP while having no significant effect on public expenditure. Since the long-run relationship between two variables was negative in the Johansen equation, we concluded that neither Wagner's Law nor Keynes' Hypothesis is valid for Turkey.