ظهور ایالات : تمرکز زدایی مالی در آمریکا در دوره پس از جنگ

One of the most dramatic changes in the fiscal federalism landscape during the postwar period has been the rapid growth in state budgets, which almost tripled as a share of GDP and doubled as a share of government spending between 1952 and 2006. We argue that the greater role of states cannot be easily explained by changes in Tiebout forces of fiscal competition, such as mobility and voting patterns, and are not accounted for by demographic or income trends. Rather, we demonstrate that much of the growth in state budgets has been driven by changes in intergovernmental interactions. Restricted federal grants to states have increased, and federal policy and legal constraints have also mandated or heavily incentivized state own-source spending, particularly in the areas of education, health and public welfare. These outside pressures moderate the forces of fiscal competition and must be taken into account when assessing the implications of observed revenue and spending patterns.

The past 50 years have seen notable changes in fiscal decentralization in the United States. The increasing concentration of responsibility at the state level has been particularly pronounced: between 1952 and 2006, total state spending increased from 4.5% to 11.6% of GDP, with direct state spending (excluding state grants to localities) growing from 3.1% to 8.6% as a share of GDP and from 11% to 24% as a share of government spending. Tax and expenditure programs at the state level also appear to have become more redistributive over time. The fastest growing component of state expenditure is public welfare, and state revenue raising has shifted away from sales taxes and toward income taxes. In this paper, we explore the reasons for the rapid growth in state budgets as well as the change in composition of these budgets. We first consider explanations motivated by the classic Tiebout model, which remains the benchmark framework for thinking about the optimal provision of public goods in a federal system (Tiebout, 1956). Although Tiebout does not speak directly to state actions, we draw broad lessons from the model through which to interpret state budget patterns. For example, one of the core features of the model, the idea that households can “vote with their feet” leading to jurisdictional competition, has been enormously influential in the subsequent fiscal federalism literature and has been applied to states as well as localities. We focus on potential explanations associated with two key aspects of the Tiebout model: mobility and the aggregation of voter preferences. Several studies find significant spillover effects of one state's spending on its neighbors, particularly in the context of welfare reform and among states with the greatest interstate migration, consistent with models of mobility-induced competition.3 Changes in mobility over time could thus change household sorting behavior and the constraints faced by different levels of government. However, despite substantial declines in moving costs (Rhode and Strumpf, 2003), we show that actual mobility has changed little since 1960 and has even declined slightly for many population subgroups. The absence of significant changes in mobility suggests that it can do little to explain observed changes in patterns of federalism.

One of the most salient changes in the landscape of fiscal federalism in the last half-century is the rising prominence of state governments. We find little evidence that changes in “Tiebout-style” forces (voting with one's feet or voting via the ballot box) can explain the rise of state programs. A closer look at the particular areas in which state budgets have grown – particularly education and health and welfare programs – suggests the importance of intergovernmental forces in determining state spending. Interpretation of state spending thus depends on understanding the extent to which that spending is compelled or incentivized by federal policies. While states still have some choices within those rules, the timing of the increases in state spending and the size of federal intergovernmental grants suggest that the patterns we observe are strongly influenced by these outside forces. The fastest ramp-up in state education spending is only partly explained by the baby boom, and coincided with the implementation of federal education policies that both increased federal education grants and required additional education spending by the states. The subsequent increase in state education grants to localities is partially attributable to the advent of court-ordered school finance equalization measures. Similar forces appear to have been at work in the growth of public health and welfare programs at the state level. In addition to these specific program areas, there has been a rise over time in the use of unfunded mandates and federal regulations that further increase state spending. A natural direction for further research would be to better quantify the relative importance of federal incentives and other changes in population characteristics and preferences in explaining the rise of state spending. In addition, these findings raise the important question of why federal interventions have increased so dramatically over the last half-century, and why federal involvement has tended to run through the states rather than through direct federal action alone. The current health reform debate highlights ongoing contention over the roles of federal and state governments in determining the shape and extent of social insurance spending.