Elite Interests and Public Expenditure in Education in the late XIX and early XX Century in Prussia: A Dialogue Between History and Economics

This paper discusses how Prussia’s public education policy was intentionally guided by economic principles that modern economists have formalized and modeled. The essay compares the results of two economic models with the intentions held by Prussian government officials, which are enshrined in the research agenda of historians and academics. The paper concludes that Prussia’s public education policy was intuitively and intentionally influenced by economic principles and intuitions of the theoretical and empirical models chosen.

GDP and Public Expenditure in Education, Health, and Defense. Empirical Research for Greece

Wagner Law and Keynesian approaches are the two fundamental theories of public finance. The aim of this study is to assess empirical evidence for the public spending–national income relationship at a disaggregated level for the time period 1995–2019. The sectoral public expenditures include education, health, and defense. The data employed were derived by EUROSTAT and OECD. Based on our findings, a sole relationship of the variables was validated, while the causality of the relationship provides conflict results depending on whether two-variate or multivariate methodology is employed. In the case of the multivariate framework that outperforms the two-variate approach in terms of information, the causality is directed from government expenses to the GDP level, validating the Keynesian approach in the long run as well as in the short run. On the other hand, the results validate Wagner Law based on the results of Granger causality pairwise test. A potential interpreatation for the results found is related to the measures imposed by the Memorandum, since the disproportionate cuts of the public expenses in the period of crisis have determined the evolution of national income. The scientific value of the presents study stands on the suggestion of potential effective measures aiming at the limitation of national income shrinkage in periods of severe economic crises worldwide.