Are State Governments Roadblocks to Federal Stimulus? Evidence on the Flypaper Effect of Highway Grants in the 2009 Recovery Act

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Leduc, Sylvain; Wilson, Daniel
• 署名单位: Bank of Canada; Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - San Francisco
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-ECONOMIC POLICY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7731
• DOI: 10.1257/pol.20140371
• 发表日期: 2017
• 页码: 253-292
• 关键词: american recovery

摘要

This paper examines how state governments adjusted spending in response to the large temporary increase in federal highway grants under the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The mechanism used to apportion ARRA highway grants to states allows one to isolate exogenous changes in these grants. The results indicate that states increased highway spending over 2009 to 2011 more than dollar-for-dollar with the ARRA grants they received. Rent-seeking efforts are shown to help explain this result: states with more political contributions from the public works sector to the governor and state legislators tended to spend more out of their ARRA highway funds than other states.