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Special Interest Groups and the Allocation of Public Funds

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  • Monica Singhal

Abstract

A long-standing puzzle in the fiscal federalism literature is the empirical non-equivalence in government spending from grants and other income. I propose a fully rational model in which violations of fungibility arise from dynamic interactions between politicians and interest groups with the ability to raise funds for local government. The predictions of the model are tested by exploiting unique features of windfalls received by states under a settlement with the tobacco industry. Although windfalls are unrestricted, the median state increased spending on tobacco control programs from zero to $2.30 per capita upon receipt of funds. The marginal propensity to spend on such programs is 0.20 from settlement revenue and zero from overall income. States which were not involved in the settlement lawsuits spend less. The findings are consistent with the predictions of the model when political partisanship is introduced: Republican governors spend less and factors which should lead to political convergence increase spending for Republicans and decrease spending for Democrats. These results cannot be explained by existing models in the literature.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 12037.

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Date of creation: Feb 2006
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:12037

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  13. 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.
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  15. Matthew C. Farrelly & Terry F. Pechacek & Frank J. Chaloupka, 2001. "The Impact of Tobacco Control Program Expenditures on Aggregate Cigarette Sales: 1981-1998," NBER Working Papers 8691, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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Cited by:
  1. Gary D. Libecap & Terry L. Anderson, 2009. "The Allocation and Dissipation of Resource Rents: Implications for Fishery Reform," ICER Working Papers 13-2009, ICER - International Centre for Economic Research.
  2. Fernando Aragon, 2012. "Local Spending, Transfers and Costly Tax Collection," Discussion Papers dp12-09, Department of Economics, Simon Fraser University.
  3. Riemer Faber & Pierre Koning, 2012. "Why Not Fully Spend a Conditional Block Grant?," CPB Discussion Paper 213, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
  4. Byron F. Lutz, 2006. "Taxation with representation: intergovernmental grants in a plebiscite democracy," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2006-06, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
  5. Ionita Predescu Lorena & Radu Florin & Tabirca Alina Iuliana, 2011. "Needs Of Local Sustainable Development," Annals of Faculty of Economics, University of Oradea, Faculty of Economics, vol. 1(2), pages 91-97, December.
  6. Chiara Del Bo & Massimo Florio & Silvia Vignetti & Emanuela Sirtori, 2011. "Additionality and regional development: are EU Structural Funds complements or substitutes of national Public Finance?," Working Papers 201101, Centre for Industrial Studies (CSIL).

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