American State Constitutions: A historical Series

自1776年以来，美国各州不断地修改和修订他们的宪法。各州在选举权、代表权、立法结构、司法结构、公司法和公共财政方面进行了各种各样的试验。宪法本身就是美国历史上基本制度变迁的记录。这一记录不仅反映了美国人对政府看法的变化，也反映了制约美国经济的制度性因素的变化。尽管有其固有的利益，但目前还没有现成的关于州宪法条款的一致历史系列。本研究将通过构建一个从1776年到现在的一致的州宪法条款的时间序列来填补这一空白。印刷的原始材料可从州宪法汇编中获得。这项研究的成果将是一份宪法条款的详细说明，以及一个可通过马里兰大学的一个网站公开提供的宪法限制的计算机数据库，该网站与国家经济研究局和大学间政治和社会研究联合会的公共数据库相连。此外，还将详细研究宪法对政府债务的限制。最简单的问题是这些债务限制是否真的有效。本研究的根本着眼点是解决债务水平和结构之间的内生性问题以及对债务问题建立宪法限制。内生性问题不仅是理解宪法限制（如平衡预算修正案）如何发挥作用的核心问题。这对于理解经济行为和制度变迁之间的相互作用至关重要。

Since 1776, American states have continually amended and revised their constitutions. States have experimented with a wide variety of suffrage, representation, legislative structures, judicial structures, corporate law, and public finance. The constitutions themselves are a record of fundamental institutional change in American history. It is a record that not only reflects changes in the way Americans think about their governments, but a record of the changing institutional constraints on the American economy. Despite its inherent interest, there is currently no readily accessible consistent historical series on the provisions of state constitutions. This research will fill that gap by constructing a consistent, time series of state constitutional provisions from 1776 to the present. Printed source materials are available from compilations of state constitutions. The product of this research will be a detailed description of constitutional provisions, and a computer accessible data base of constitutional restrictions made publicly available through a Web site at the University of Maryland, linked to public data bases at the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research. In addition, constitutional limitations on government debt will be investigated in detail. The simplest question is whether these debt restrictions actually work.. The fundamental focus of this research is to solve the problem of endogeneity between the level and structure of debt and the creation of constitutional restrictions on debt issue. The issue of endogeneity is central not only to understanding how constitutional restrictions, like a balanced budget amendment, may work. It is central to understanding the interaction of economic behavior and institutional change over time.