American State Constitutions: A historical Series

自1776年以来，美国各州不断修改和修订宪法。 各州已经尝试了各种各样的选举权、代表权、立法结构、司法结构、公司法和公共财政。 宪法本身就是美国历史上根本性制度变革的记录。 它不仅反映了美国人对政府看法的变化，也反映了美国经济制度约束的变化。 尽管其固有的利益，目前还没有现成的一致的历史系列的规定，国家宪法。 这项研究将填补这一空白，通过构建一个一致的，从1776年到现在的州宪法规定的时间序列。 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对宪法规定的详细说明，以及通过马里兰州大学的一个网址公开提供的一个可由计算机检索的宪法限制数据库，该网址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接。 此外，宪法对政府债务的限制将被详细研究。 最简单的问题是，这些债务限制是否真的有效。 本文研究的根本问题是解决债务水平和债务结构与债务发行的宪法限制之间的内在矛盾。 内分泌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。 它是理解经济行为和制度变迁随时间变化的相互作用的核心。

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.