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State Higher Education Spending and the Tax Revolt

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  • Robert B Archibald

    (College of William & Mary)

  • David H Feldman

    (College of William & Mary)

Abstract

Public effort in support of higher education – measured as state funding per thousand dollars of personal income – has declined by thirty percent since the late 1970s. During this time period many states implemented Tax and Expenditure Limits and/or supermajority requirements for tax increases. We use a forty-eight state panel from 1961 to 2001 to evaluate the effect of these tax revolt institutions for state effort on behalf of higher education. These provisions have a statistically significant and economically large impact on the timing and magnitude of this decline in state effort. An understanding of the fiscal environment caused by these provisions is critical for the future of state-supported higher education.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert B Archibald & David H Feldman, 2004. "State Higher Education Spending and the Tax Revolt," HEW 0412003, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:wpa:wuwphe:0412003
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Stone, Joe A., 2016. "A Poison Pell for Public Colleges? Pell Grants and Funding for Public Colleges in the U. S," MPRA Paper 71761, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Elizabeth Bell & Wesley Wehde & Madeleine Stucky, 2020. "Supplement or Supplant? Estimating the Impact of State Lottery Earmarks on Higher Education Funding," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 15(1), pages 136-163, Winter.
    3. Justina A.V. Fischer, 2005. "Do Institutions of Direct Democracy Tame the Leviathan? Swiss Evidence on the Structure of Expenditure for Public Education," CESifo Working Paper Series 1628, CESifo.
    4. Davis, Matt & Vedder, Andrea & Stone, Joe, 2015. "Local Tax Limits, Student Achievement, and School-Finance Equalization," MPRA Paper 63704, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Amy Y. Li, 2017. "Dramatic Declines in Higher Education Appropriations: State Conditions for Budget Punctuations," Research in Higher Education, Springer;Association for Institutional Research, vol. 58(4), pages 395-429, June.
    6. Jeffrey M. Kulik & Natalia Ermasova, 2018. "Tax Expenditure Limitations (TELs) and State Expenditure Structure in the USA," Public Organization Review, Springer, vol. 18(1), pages 53-69, March.
    7. Cockx, Lara & Francken, Nathalie, 2016. "Natural resources: A curse on education spending?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 394-408.
    8. Gianiodis, Peter T. & Meek, William R. & Chen, Wendy, 2019. "Political climate and academic entrepreneurship: The case of strange bedfellows?," Journal of Business Venturing Insights, Elsevier, vol. 12(C).
    9. Chatterji, Aaron K. & Kim, Joowon & McDevitt, Ryan C., 2018. "School spirit: Legislator school ties and state funding for higher education," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 164(C), pages 254-269.
    10. Yaw M. Mensah & Michael P. Schoderbek & Min Cao & Savita A. Sahay, 2023. "The disciplinary effect of taxpayer balloting on public spending: some empirical evidence," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 60(2), pages 791-819, February.
    11. Stone, Joe, 2012. "State funding for public higher education: explaining the great retreat," MPRA Paper 39732, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Mar 2012.
    12. John M. Foster & Jacob Fowles, 2018. "Ethnic Heterogeneity, Group Affinity, and State Higher Education Spending," Research in Higher Education, Springer;Association for Institutional Research, vol. 59(1), pages 1-28, February.
    13. Robert B. Archibald & David H. Feldman, 2008. "Explaining Increases in Higher Education Costs," The Journal of Higher Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 79(3), pages 268-295, May.
    14. Geiguen Shin & Jeremy L. Hall, 2018. "Exploring the Influence of Federal Welfare Expenditures on State-Level New Economy Development Performance: Drawing From the Diffusion of Innovation Theory," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 32(3), pages 242-256, August.
    15. Aránzazu Guillán Montero & David Le Blanc, 2019. "Lessons for Today from Past Periods of Rapid Technological Change," Working Papers 158, United Nations, Department of Economics and Social Affairs.
    16. Michael K. McLendon & David A. Tandberg & Nicholas W. Hillman, 2014. "Financing College Opportunity," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 655(1), pages 143-162, September.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    State higher education spending; tax revolt; Tax and Expenditure Limits;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I22 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Educational Finance; Financial Aid
    • H71 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue

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