Optimal size of public expenditure in the countries of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU)

This article uses annual data covering the period 2000-2019 to verify the existence of an optimal size of general government consumption expenditure in the countries of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU). Our work is based on a quadratic modeling using the Armey curve (1995) developed by Vedder and Gallaway (1998). The Pooled Mean Group (PMG) estimator was used to perform the estimation. The results of the model's estimation lead to the conclusion that there is an optimal size of public expenditure estimated at 15.65%.