L'évolution séculaire des dépenses publiques en France

This paper deals with the main aspects of the growth of public expenditures in France over a century (1872-1971). They include outlays of central and local governments, including for social security, all of which are financed mainly through tax resources. The growth of public expenditures has been irregular. Its internal structure has been profoundly transformed, with regard both to the areas in which expenditures are made and to resource use categories. We show that among explanatory theses concerned with the overall level of public spending, the so-called 'displacement effect' reduces to a simple threshold assumption with little explanatory power. On a disaggregated level, we show that the study of a specific field of application i.e expenditures on public education, provides a way to distinguish various influences on them, related to the 'supply' side on the one hand, to the 'demand' side on the other hand.André Christine, Delorme Robert. L'évolution séculaire des dépenses publiques en France. In: Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations. 33ᵉ année, N. 2, 1978. pp. 255-278