Replication data for: Are State Governments Roadblocks to Federal Stimulus? Evidence on the Flypaper Effect of Highway Grants in the 2009 Recovery Act

This paper examines how state governments adjusted spending in response to the large temporary increase in federal highway grants under the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The mechanism used to apportion ARRA highway grants to states allows one to isolate exogenous changes in these grants. The results indicate that states increased highway spending over 2009 to 2011 more than dollar-for-dollar with the ARRA grants they received. Rent-seeking efforts are shown to help explain this result: states with more political contributions from the public works sector to the governor and state legislators tended to spend more out of their ARRA highway funds than other states.

本文考察了美国各州政府如何调整支出，以应对2009年《美国复苏与再投资法案》（American Recovery and Reinvestment Act，ARRA）下联邦公路拨款的临时性大幅增长。该法案用于向各州分配公路拨款的机制，使得研究者能够分离出此类拨款的外生变动。研究结果表明，2009至2011年间，各州的公路支出增幅超过了其所获ARRA公路拨款的等额水平，即每获得1美元拨款，公路支出增加额超过1美元。研究显示，寻租行为有助于解释这一结果：相较于其他州，公共工程部门向州长及州议员提供更多政治捐款的州，其从ARRA公路拨款中列支的支出规模更高。