Political Pressure and Fiscal Federalism: A Model of State Mandates on Local Government Expenditures

联邦主义的研究传统上审查某些商品或服务是否最好在地方、州或联邦各级政府提供。在联邦制下，地方提供商品和服务效率低下的问题可以通过将地方公共产品的生产或融资转移到更高级别的政府来解决。另一种讨论较少的替代方案是由更高级别的政府对下属单位施加授权。授权是对政府下属单位的数量限制，要求根据溢出的方向增加或减少货物的供应。这项研究项目开发了一个以授权为重点的联邦主义政治经济学模型。出于实证目的，该模型强调地方和州政府关系，但它可以很容易地扩展到州和联邦关系。该模型使用当地提供的各种商品和服务的支出数据进行了实证检验。该项目的意义在于将政治过程与地方公共产品的规范性经济模型相结合。如果没有一个积极的财政联邦主义模式，分析政府间政策的尝试就不会成功。这个项目迈出了第一步，回答了关于哪一级政府提供特定商品的决定因素的非常重要的政策问题，并分析了各级政府之间相互作用的性质。

Studies in federalism have traditionally examined whether certain goods or services are best provided at the local, state, or federal levels of government. Inefficiencies in local provision of goods and services can be addressed in a federalist system by shifting either the production or financing of the local public good to higher levels of government . A much less discussed alternative is the imposition of mandates by higher levels of government on subordinate units. Mandates are quantity constraints on the subordinate units of government that require an increase or decrease in the provision of the good depending on the direction of the spillover. This research project develops a political economy model of federalism that focuses on mandates. For empirical purposes, the model emphasizes local and state government relationships but it could be easily extended to state and federal relationships. The model is empirically tested using expenditure data for various categories of locally provided goods and services. The significance of this project lies in combining the political process with the normative economic models of local public goods. Attempts to analyze intergovernment policies cannot be successful without a positive model of fiscal federalism. This project takes a first step in answering very important policy questions regarding the determinants of which levels of government provide particular goods and analyzing the nature of the interaction between levels of government.