IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedhwp/wp-08-21.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Public investment and budget rules for state vs. local governments

Author

Listed:
  • Marco Bassetto

Abstract

Across different layers of the U.S. government there are surprisingly large differences in institutional provisions that impose fiscal discipline, such as constitutionally mandated deficit or debt limits, or specific tax bases. In this paper we develop a framework that can be used to quantitatively assess their costs and benefits. The model features both endogenous and exogenous mobility across jurisdictions, so we can evaluate whether the different degree of mobility at the local vs. national level can justify different institutional restrictions. In preliminary results, we show that pure land taxes have very beneficial incentive effects, but can only raise limited amounts of revenues. In contrast, under exogenous mobility, income taxes lead unambiguously to insufficient incentives to invest in public capital, unless the fiscal constraints explicitly favor such investment. This conclusion seems to hold even with the introduction of endogenous mobility, since adverse congestion effects from inefficient migration offset the beneficial impact of (partial) capitalization of future taxes into land prices.

Suggested Citation

  • Marco Bassetto, 2008. "Public investment and budget rules for state vs. local governments," Working Paper Series WP-08-21, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
  • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedhwp:wp-08-21
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.chicagofed.org/digital_assets/publications/working_papers/2008/wp2008_21.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hassler, John & Krusell, Per & Storesletten, Kjetil & Zilibotti, Fabrizio, 2005. "The dynamics of government," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(7), pages 1331-1358, October.
    2. Jovanovic, Boyan & Rosenthal, Robert W., 1988. "Anonymous sequential games," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 77-87, February.
    3. Marina Azzimonti Renzo, 2004. "On the dynamic inefficiency of governments," 2004 Meeting Papers 228, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    4. Matthias Doepke & Fabrizio Zilibotti, 2005. "The Macroeconomics of Child Labor Regulation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(5), pages 1492-1524, December.
    5. Wildasin, David E. & Wilson, John Douglas, 1996. "Imperfect mobility and local government behaviour in an overlapping-generations model," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(2), pages 177-198, May.
    6. Bassetto, Marco, 2005. "Equilibrium and government commitment," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 124(1), pages 79-105, September.
    7. Charles M. Tiebout, 1956. "A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 64(5), pages 416-416.
    8. Harald Uhlig, 1996. "A law of large numbers for large economies (*)," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 8(1), pages 41-50.
    9. Schultz, Christian & Sjostrom, Tomas, 2001. "Local public goods, debt and migration," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(2), pages 313-337, May.
    10. Jonah B. Gelbach, 2004. "Migration, the Life Cycle, and State Benefits: How Low Is the Bottom?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(5), pages 1091-1130, October.
    11. John Conley & Antonio Rangel, 2001. "Intergenerational Fiscal Constitutions: How to Protect Future Generations Using Land Taxes and Federalism," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 28(17), pages 1.
    12. Mieszkowski, Peter & Zodrow, George R, 1989. "Taxation and the Tiebout Model: The Differential Effects of Head Taxes, Taxes on Land Rents, and Property Taxes," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 27(3), pages 1098-1146, September.
    13. Marco Battaglini, 2009. "On the Case for a Balanced Budget Amendment to the U.S. Constitution," 2009 Meeting Papers 131, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    14. Marco Bassetto, 2006. "Politics and Efficiency of Separating Capital and Ordinary Government Budgets," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 121(4), pages 1167-1210.
    15. Chari, V V & Kehoe, Patrick J, 1990. "Sustainable Plans," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(4), pages 783-802, August.
    16. Paul Klein & Per Krusell & José-Víctor Ríos-Rull, 2008. "Time-Consistent Public Policy," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 75(3), pages 789-808.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Marco Bassetto, 2009. "The Research Agenda: Marco Bassetto on the Quantitative Evaluation of Fiscal Policy Rules," EconomicDynamics Newsletter, Review of Economic Dynamics, vol. 10(2), April.
    2. Marco Bassetto & Leslie McGranahan, 2021. "Mobility, Population Growth, and Public Capital Spending in the United States," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 41, pages 255-277, July.
    3. Marco Bassetto & Leslie McGranahan, 2009. "On the relationship between mobility, population growth, and capital spending in the United States," Working Paper Series WP-09-25, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Marco Bassetto, 2006. "Politics and Efficiency of Separating Capital and Ordinary Government Budgets," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 121(4), pages 1167-1210.
    2. Marco Bassetto, 2009. "The Research Agenda: Marco Bassetto on the Quantitative Evaluation of Fiscal Policy Rules," EconomicDynamics Newsletter, Review of Economic Dynamics, vol. 10(2), April.
    3. Marco Bassetto & Leslie McGranahan, 2021. "Mobility, Population Growth, and Public Capital Spending in the United States," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 41, pages 255-277, July.
    4. Alesina, A. & Passalacqua, A., 2016. "The Political Economy of Government Debt," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 2599-2651, Elsevier.
    5. Rüdiger Bachmann & Jinhui H. Bai, 2013. "Public consumption over the business cycle," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 4(3), pages 417-451, November.
    6. Barseghyan, Levon & Coate, Stephen, 2021. "Community development by public wealth accumulation," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(C).
    7. John P. Conley & Robert Driskill & Ping Wang, 2019. "Capitalization, decentralization, and intergenerational spillovers in a Tiebout economy with a durable public good," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 67(1), pages 1-27, February.
    8. Marco Bassetto & Leslie McGranahan, 2009. "On the relationship between mobility, population growth, and capital spending in the United States," Working Paper Series WP-09-25, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    9. Ruediger Bachmann & Jinhui Bai, 2013. "Politico-Economic Inequality and the Comovement of Government Purchases," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 16(4), pages 565-580, October.
    10. Barseghyan, Levon & Battaglini, Marco & Coate, Stephen, 2013. "Fiscal policy over the real business cycle: A positive theory," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 148(6), pages 2223-2265.
    11. Gordon, Grey & Guerron-Quintana, Pablo, 2024. "On regional borrowing, default, and migration," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 150(C).
    12. Marco Bassetto & Zhen Huo & José-Víctor Ríos-Rull, 2018. "Organizational Equilibrium with Capital," NBER Working Papers 25376, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Jinhui H. Bai & Roger Lagunoff, 2011. "On the Faustian Dynamics of Policy and Political Power," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 78(1), pages 17-48.
    14. Ruediger Bachmann & Jinhui Bai, 2013. "Politico-Economic Inequality and the Comovement of Government Purchases," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 16(4), pages 565-580, October.
    15. Hilber, Christian A.L., 2010. "New housing supply and the dilution of social capital," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(3), pages 419-437, May.
    16. Tidiane Ly, 2018. "Sub-metropolitan tax competition with household and capital mobility," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 25(5), pages 1129-1169, October.
    17. Marco Bassetto, 2002. "A Game-Theoretic View of the Fiscal Theory of the Price Level," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(6), pages 2167-2195, November.
    18. George R. Zodrow, 2019. "Intrajurisdictional Capitalization and the Incidence of the Property Tax," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: George R Zodrow (ed.), TAXATION IN THEORY AND PRACTICE Selected Essays of George R. Zodrow, chapter 16, pages 489-522, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    19. Sung Hoon Kang & Mark Skidmore & Laura Reese, 2015. "The Effects of Changes in Property Tax Rates and School Spending on Residential and Business Property Value Growth," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 43(2), pages 300-333, June.
    20. Baicker, Katherine & Clemens, Jeffrey & Singhal, Monica, 2012. "The rise of the states: U.S. fiscal decentralization in the postwar period," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(11), pages 1079-1091.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    state finances; Local finance; Investments;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedhwp:wp-08-21. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Lauren Wiese (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbchus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.