Recent proposals assume that endowing the U.S. President with a line item veto will reduce spending. Analysis of a rich set of state budget data indicates that long run budgets are not altered by an item veto. In the short run, the item veto's potency is contingent upon the political setting....

Researchers, commentators, and politicians have devoted steadily more attention to infrastructure in response to claims that inadequate accumulation of public capital has contributed to substandard U.S. economic growth. Despite this, the link between infrastructure and productivity growth...

Some commentators have suggested that the absence of portable health insurance impedes people from leaving their jobs to start new firms. We investigate this belief by comparing wage-earners who become self-employed during a given period of time with their counterparts who do not. By examining...

Worldwide, dependency ratios are forecast to increase dramatically in the next 50 years. A great deal of attention has been devoted to understanding the changes in fiscal policies that must' take place to accommodate these changes. In contrast, less effort has been concentrated on studying the...

This paper considers estimation and testing of vector autoregression coefficients in panel data, and applies the techniques to analyze the dynamic properties of revenues, expenditures, and grants in a sample of United States municipalities. The model allows for nonstationary individual effects,...

Despite widespread concern and discussion, no consensus exists concerning the causes of the "infrastructure crisis" or its implications for the efficiency of government decision-making more generally. We investigate several models of the determination of local public capital expenditures. Using...

A number of studies have suggested a quantitatively important relationship between public-sector capital accumulation and private sector productivity, with the most compelling evidence derived from analyses of state-level data. estimates herein of production functions that use standard...

Critics argue that the estate tax prevents the owners of family businesses from passing their enterprises to heirs because it is difficult to pay estate taxes without liquidating the business. Why don't owners purchase enough life insurance to meet their estate tax liabilities? We examine...