The relationship between revenue and expenditure in modern Japan: A wavelet-based analysis of 150 years

This study reevaluates the relationship between Japanese government revenue and expenditure from a time-frequency standpoint. Specifically, we employ the wavelet-based Granger test within the period from 1870 to 2019. Our findings demonstrate bilateral positive effects between government income and spending. Consequently, both the tax-spend and spend-tax hypotheses are affirmed in modern Japan. However, the prevailing pattern over time has shifted from tax-spend to spend-tax. Given the predominant focus of prior studies on the postwar era employing time-domain approaches, our analysis presents a comprehensive perspective encompassing diverse time-frequency combinations. We discuss the implications of this research in the concluding section.