This dissertation investigates changes in size, composition, and fiscal authority of government expenditure brought on by social disturbance by examining the effects of German reunification on government spending. This research tests several hypotheses using data on total spending and six major sub-policy spending categories between 1972 and 2006. First, this study identifies strong evidence of a large upward displacement effect following reunification, with a particular emphasis on social security spending. Second, this study finds a strong and positive correlation between per capita GDP and total spending as well as social security, education, and public safety spending, which confirms Wagner's Law. Results also reveal that unemployment rate is strongly and positively related to total spending and several sub policy categories both before and after reunification. Additionally, this study finds that the proportions of the youth and elderly populations are negatively associated with total spending after reunification. However, the proportion of the youth population is positively associated with per capita education spending, as the proportion of elderly population with social security spending. The results also show that economic openness has a strong positive impact on both total spending and economic services spending; however, the relationship between economic openness and social security, education, and health spending after reunification is negative. The right party control variable has no significant impact on total spending after reunification, though party control does seem to influence social security and defense spending. Furthermore, the election variable does not have a significant impact on spending except for a positive and significant impact on social security spending after reunification. On the other hand, the coalition government and the proportion of public employees variables have strong and positive impacts on total spending and several sub-policy categories after reunification. The deficit ratio variable is found to have a positive and significant impact on total spending and public safety spending after reunification. Lastly, using a traditional expenditure ratio and a composite ratio to measure fiscal decentralization, this study finds that after reunification there is a trend towards fiscal centralization in total spending and social security, economic services, health, and public safety spending. / Ph. D.

[pt] A coexistência de valores e interesses diversos nas sociedades atuais exige que o ordenamento jurídico não se deixe mover por normas unilateralmente fixadas ou valores absolutos. No Brasil, a Constituição que assegura o direito à intimidade, considerado pela doutrina e jurisprudência fundamento do sigilo bancário, estabelece ser facultado à administração tributária, especialmente para conferir efetividade ao princípio da capacidade econômica do contribuinte, identificar, respeitados os direitos individuais e nos termos da lei, o patrimônio, os rendimentos e as atividades econômicas dos contribuintes, sendo vedado atribuir tratamento desigual àqueles que se encontrem em situação equivalente. Além disso, é inegável o fato de que as instituições financeiras vêm sendo utilizadas com finalidade ilícita, servindo de meio para a realização de crimes como a lavagem de dinheiro e a evasão de divisas, cujo combate tem sido intensificado tanto no Brasil, quanto no cenário mundial. Neste processo, surge a tensão entre o interesse público na obtenção, pela autoridade fiscal, de dados que podem comprovar a realização de ilícitos e proporcionar a concretização dos princípios da isonomia e da capacidade contributiva, e a necessidade de proteção da esfera privada do indivíduo, objeto da presente dissertação. / [en] The coexistence of valuables and several interests in the current societies demand that the legal system will not make any movement on account of rules that have been established by one-sided only, or on account of values that are absolute. In Brazil, the Constitution that assures the right to intimacy (privacy s right), considered by the doctrine and by the jurisprudence as a ground of the bank secrecy, establishes that it is facilitated to the tax administration, specially to onfer effectiveness to the principle of the economic capacity of the taxpayers, to identify, respected the individual rights and the law terms, the assets, their incomes and their economic activities, being forbidden to attribute different treatment to those who are found under an equivalent situation. Moreover, the fact that the financial institutions are being used for illegal purposes is undeniable, serving as a way for the performance of crimes such as money laundering and foreing currency s evasion, which combat has been intensified as much as in Brazil as in the world scenery. In this process, the tension between the public interest raises, to obtain from the fiscal authority, the data that can prove the performance of illegal acts and that can provide the realization of the isonomy principles and of the tax- paying ability, as well as the protection needed of the individual private sphere, object of this present work.