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Schools and Stimulus

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Abstract

This paper analyzes the impact of the education funding component of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the Recovery Act) on public school districts. We use cross- Sectional differences in district-level Recovery Act funding to investigate the program's impact on staffing, expenditures and debt accumulation. To achieve identification, we use exogenous variation across districts in the allocations of Recovery Act funds for special needs students. We estimate that $1 million of grants to a district had the following effects: expenditures increased by $570 thousand, district employment saw little or no change, and an additional $370 thousand in debt was accumulated. Moreover, 70% of the increase in expenditures came in the form of capital outlays. Next, we build a dynamic, decision theoretic model of a school district's budgeting problem, which we calibrate to district level expenditure and staffing data. The model can qualitatively match the employment and capital expenditure responses from our regressions. We also use the model to conduct policy experiments.

Suggested Citation

  • Bill Dupor & M. Saif Mehkari, 2015. "Schools and Stimulus," Working Papers 2015-4, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedlwp:2015-004
    DOI: 10.20955/wp.2015.004
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    Other versions of this item:

    • Bill Dupor & M. Saif Mehkari, 2020. "Schools and Stimulus," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 102(2), pages 145-171, May.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gordon, Nora, 2004. "Do federal grants boost school spending? Evidence from Title I," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(9-10), pages 1771-1792, August.
    2. Daniel J. Wilson, 2012. "Fiscal Spending Jobs Multipliers: Evidence from the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 4(3), pages 251-282, August.
    3. Gabriel Chodorow-Reich & Laura Feiveson & Zachary Liscow & William Gui Woolston, 2012. "Does State Fiscal Relief during Recessions Increase Employment? Evidence from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 4(3), pages 118-145, August.
    4. Rajashri Chakrabarti & Elizabeth Setren, 2011. "The impact of the Great Recession on school district finances: evidence from New York," Staff Reports 534, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    5. Heléne Lundqvist & Matz Dahlberg & Eva Mörk, 2014. "Stimulating Local Public Employment: Do General Grants Work?," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 6(1), pages 167-192, February.
    6. Bill Dupor & Peter B. McCrory, 2018. "A Cup Runneth Over: Fiscal Policy Spillovers from the 2009 Recovery Act," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 128(611), pages 1476-1508, June.
    7. Robert P. Inman, 2010. "States in Fiscal Distress," NBER Working Papers 16086, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Brian Knight, 2002. "Endogenous Federal Grants and Crowd-out of State Government Spending: Theory and Evidence from the Federal Highway Aid Program," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(1), pages 71-92, March.
    9. Conley, Timothy G. & Dupor, Bill, 2013. "The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: Solely a government jobs program?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(5), pages 535-549.
    10. Evans, William N. & Owens, Emily G., 2007. "COPS and crime," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(1-2), pages 181-201, February.
    11. Gramlich, Edward M, 1979. "Stimulating the Macro Economy through State and Local Governments," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 69(2), pages 180-185, May.
    12. David F. Bradford & Wallace E. Oates, 1971. "The Analysis of Revenue Sharing in a New Approach to Collective Fiscal Decisions," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 85(3), pages 416-439.
    13. Robert P. Inman, 2010. "States in fiscal distress," Regional Economic Development, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, issue Oct, pages 65-80.
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    Cited by:

    1. Bill Dupor & Marios Karabarbounis & Marianna Kudlyak & M Saif Mehkari, 2023. "Regional Consumption Responses and the Aggregate Fiscal Multiplier," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 90(6), pages 2982-3021.
    2. Christopher Biolsi & Steven Craig & Amrita Dhar & Bent Sorensen, 2022. "Inequality in Public School Spending Across Space and Time," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 46, pages 244-279, October.
    3. Rong Li, 2017. "Putting Government Spending Shocks under the Microscope: Standard Vector Autoregression versus the Narrative Approach," FinanzArchiv: Public Finance Analysis, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 73(3), pages 237-254, September.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    fiscal policy; K-12 education; American Recovery and Reinvestment Act;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D1 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior
    • D24 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Production; Cost; Capital; Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity; Capacity
    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy
    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory

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