本研究應用平滑轉換自我迴歸(Smooth Transition Autoregressive, STAR)模型檢定南韓、馬來西亞、新加坡、台灣和泰國之政府規模對經濟成長的影響。樣本期間為1961年至2004年，並採政府消費支出占國內生產毛額比作為政府規模的估計變數。由實證結果發現，除了馬來西亞國家外，各國之政府規模與經濟成長變數間存在非線性的關係，並且支持Barro(1990)所提之假設。當政府規模超出某一門檻將對國家的經濟成長率產生負面衝擊，其中南韓與泰國為11%，台灣為16%。因此，根據實證之結果，本文得出政府規模並非越大越好之結論。 This paper employs a smooth transition autoregressive (STAR) model to investigate the effects of government size (measured as the share of government consumption expenditure in GDP) on economic growth using South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand as sample countries during the period from 1961 to 2004. The empirical results reveal that there is a nonlinear relationship among variables for each country except Malaysia, and confirm the view of Barro (1990) that the government size over a certain threshold will have an adverse impact on economic growth rate for Korea, Taiwan and Thailand. Through the STAR framework, we find that the estimated threshold of government size is 11% for most countries while the government size of Taiwan is 16% and further conclude that the bigger government size is not really the better.
