IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/6440.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Changing the Price of Pork: The Impact of Local Cost Sharing on Legislators' Demand for Distributive Public Goods

Author

Listed:
  • Alison F. DelRossi
  • Robert P. Inman

Abstract

The provision of public services through national legislatures gives legislators the chance to fund locally-beneficial public projects using a shared national tax base. Nationally-financed, local public goods will be purchased at a subsidized price below marginal cost and may be inefficiently too large as a consequence. An important assumption behind this conclusion is that national legislators in fact demand more of the locally-beneficial project as the local price for projects declines. This paper provides the first direct test of this important assumption using legislators' project choices following the passage of the Water Resources Development Act of 1986 (WRDA'86). We find legislators' chosen water project sizes do fall as the local cost share rises, with a price elasticity of demand ranging from -1.3 for flood control and shoreline protection projects to perhaps as high as -2.5 for large navigation projects. The requirement of WRDA'86 that local taxpayers contribute a greater share to the funding of local water projects reduced overall project spending in our sample by 35 percent and the federal outlay for project spending by 48 percent.

Suggested Citation

  • Alison F. DelRossi & Robert P. Inman, 1998. "Changing the Price of Pork: The Impact of Local Cost Sharing on Legislators' Demand for Distributive Public Goods," NBER Working Papers 6440, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:6440
    Note: PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w6440.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bergstrom, Theodore C & Goodman, Robert P, 1973. "Private Demands for Public Goods," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 63(3), pages 280-296, June.
    2. Bergstrom, Theodore C & Rubinfeld, Daniel L & Shapiro, Perry, 1982. "Micro-Based Estimates of Demand Functions for Local School Expenditures," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(5), pages 1183-1205, September.
    3. Craig, Steven G., 1987. "The impact of congestion on local public good production," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 331-353, April.
    4. Romer, Thomas & Rosenthal, Howard, 1979. "The elusive median voter," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(2), pages 143-170, October.
    5. Neary, J. P. & Roberts, K. W. S., 1980. "The theory of household behaviour under rationing," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 25-42, January.
    6. Gilligan, Thomas W & Matsusaka, John G, 1995. "Deviations from Constituent Interests: The Role of Legislative Structure and Political Parties in the States," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 33(3), pages 383-401, July.
    7. Kunreuther, Howard, 1996. "Mitigating Disaster Losses through Insurance," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 12(2-3), pages 171-187, May.
    8. Leonard Shabman & G. Edward Dickey, 1986. "Federal Financial Responsibility For Coastal Port Development: A Study Of The Process Of Policy Redefinition," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 6(2), pages 358-365, November.
    9. Kahn, Matthew E & Matsusaka, John G, 1997. "Demand for Environmental Goods: Evidence from Voting Patterns on California Initiatives," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 40(1), pages 137-173, April.
    10. Douglas R. Dalenberg & Mark D. Partridge & Dan S. Rickman, 1998. "Public Infrastructure: Pork or Jobs Creator?," Public Finance Review, , vol. 26(1), pages 24-52, January.
    11. Hird, John A., 1991. "The Political Economy of Pork: Project Selection at The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 85(2), pages 429-456, June.
    12. Crain, W Mark, 1999. "Districts, Diversity, and Fiscal Biases: Evidence from the American States," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 42(2), pages 675-698, October.
    13. Del Rossi, Alison F, 1995. "The Politics and Economics of Pork Barrel Spending: The Case of Federal Financing of Water Resources Development," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 85(3-4), pages 285-305, December.
    14. Moffitt, Robert A., 1984. "The effects of grants-in-aid on state and local expenditures : The case of AFDC," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(3), pages 279-305, April.
    15. Groseclose, Tim & Snyder, James M., 1996. "Buying Supermajorities," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 90(2), pages 303-315, June.
    16. Inman, Robert P & Fitts, Michael A, 1990. "Political Institutions and Fiscal Policy: Evidence from the U.S. Historical Record," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 6(0), pages 79-132.
    17. Weingast, Barry R & Shepsle, Kenneth A & Johnsen, Christopher, 1981. "The Political Economy of Benefits and Costs: A Neoclassical Approach to Distributive Politics," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 89(4), pages 642-664, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Dongwon Lee, 2016. "Supermajority rule and bicameral bargaining," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 169(1), pages 53-75, October.
    2. George R. Crowley, 2019. "The Law of 1/n Revisited: Distributive Politics, Legislature Size, and the Costs of Collective Action," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 86(2), pages 667-690, October.
    3. Gebhard Kirchgassner, 2002. "The effects of fiscal institutions on public finance: a survey of the empirical evidence," Chapters, in: Stanley L. Winer & Hirofumi Shibata (ed.), Political Economy and Public Finance, chapter 9, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    4. Leif Helland & Rune Sørensen, 2009. "Geographical redistribution with disproportional representation: a politico-economic model of Norwegian road projects," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 139(1), pages 5-19, April.
    5. Robert P. Inman & Daniel L. Rubinfeld, 1997. "Rethinking Federalism," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 11(4), pages 43-64, Fall.
    6. Dongwon Lee & Sangwon Park, 2018. "Court-ordered redistricting and the law of 1/n," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 176(3), pages 507-528, September.
    7. Mark P. Jones & Pablo Sanguinetti & Mariano Tommasi, 1999. "Politics, Institutions, and Public-Sector Spending in the Argentine Provinces," NBER Chapters, in: Fiscal Institutions and Fiscal Performance, pages 135-150, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Henrik Jordahl & Che-Yuan Liang, 2010. "Merged municipalities, higher debt: on free-riding and the common pool problem in politics," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 143(1), pages 157-172, April.
    9. Reza Baqir, 2001. "Government Spending, Legislature Size, and the Executive Veto," IMF Working Papers 2001/208, International Monetary Fund.
    10. Rhee, Se-Koo, 1996. "The impact of intergovernmental grants-in-aid on public school expenditure under the segregated school system," ISU General Staff Papers 1996010108000012396, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    11. Moffitt, Robert & Ribar, David & Wilhelm, Mark, 1998. "The decline of welfare benefits in the U.S.: the role of wage inequality," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(3), pages 421-452, June.
    12. Bradbury, John Charles & Crain, W. Mark, 2001. "Legislative organization and government spending: cross-country evidence," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(3), pages 309-325, December.
    13. Germà Bel & Ringa Raudla & Miguel Rodrigues & António F. Tavares, 2018. "These rules are made for spending: testing and extending the law of 1/n," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 174(1), pages 41-60, January.
    14. G. Tridimas*, 1985. "Budget Deficits and the Growth of Public Expenditure in South Africa," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 53(4), pages 251-257, December.
    15. Schaltegger, Christoph A. & Feld, Lars P., 2009. "Do large cabinets favor large governments? Evidence on the fiscal commons problem for Swiss Cantons," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(1-2), pages 35-47, February.
    16. Knight, Brian, 2004. "Parochial interests and the centralized provision of local public goods: evidence from congressional voting on transportation projects," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(3-4), pages 845-866, March.
    17. John G. Matsusaka, 2018. "Public policy and the initiative and referendum: a survey with some new evidence," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 174(1), pages 107-143, January.
    18. Dongwon Lee, 2015. "Supermajority rule and the law of 1/n," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 164(3), pages 251-274, September.
    19. George R. Crowley, 2015. "Local Intergovernmental Competition and the Law of 1/n," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 81(3), pages 742-768, January.
    20. Aronsson, Thomas & Wikstrom, Magnus, 1996. "Local public expenditure in Sweden a model where the median voter is not necessarily decisive," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(9), pages 1705-1716, December.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H4 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods

    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:nbr:nberwo:6440. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.