Changing the Price of Pork: The Impact of Local Cost Sharing on Legislators&Apos; Demand for Distributive Public Goods
Changing the Price of Pork: The Impact of Local Cost Sharing on Legislators&Apos; Demand for Distributive Public Goods
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改变猪肉价格：地方成本分摊对立法者的影响
DOI：
10.1016/s0047-2727(98)00071-1
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发表时间：
1998
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
R. Inman
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Alison F. Del Rossi;R. Inman
通过国家立法机构提供公共服务使立法者有机会利用共同的国家税基为当地受益的公共项目提供资金。国家资助和提供的地方(拥挤)公共产品将以低于边际成本的补贴价格购买，其结果可能是效率低下的过大。这种低效背后的一个重要假设是，随着当地项目价格的下降，国家立法者实际上要求更多有利于当地的项目。本文首次利用1986年水资源开发法(WRDA‘86)通过后立法者的项目选择对这一重要假设进行了直接检验。我们发现，随着当地成本份额的上升，立法者选择的水利工程规模确实会下降，需求的价格弹性从防洪和海岸线保护项目的−0.81%到大型航运项目的−2.55%不等。WRDA‘86要求地方纳税人为当地水务项目提供更大份额的资金，这使得我们样本中的总体拟议项目支出减少了35%，联邦政府为拟议项目支出减少了48%。
The provision of public services through national legislatures gives legislators the chance to fund locally beneficial public projects using a shared national tax base. Nationally financed and provided local (congestible) public goods will be purchased at a subsidized price below marginal cost and may be inefficiently too large as a consequence. An important assumption behind this inefficiency is that national legislators in fact demand more of the locally beneficial project as the local price for projects declines. This paper provides the first direct test of this important assumption using legislators' project choices following the passage of the Water Resources Development Act of 1986 (WRDA'86). We find legislators' chosen water project sizes do fall as the local cost share rises, with a price elasticity of demand ranging from −0.81 for flood control and shoreline protection projects to −2.55 for large navigation projects. The requirement of WRDA'86 that local taxpayers contribute a greater share to the funding of local water projects reduced overall proposed project spending in our sample by 35% and the federal outlay for proposed project spending by 48%.