Do Expiring Budgets Lead to Wasteful Year-End Spending? Evidence from Federal Procurement
69 Pages Posted: 27 Sep 2013 Last revised: 18 Sep 2017
There are 2 versions of this paper
Do Expiring Budgets Lead to Wasteful Year-End Spending? Evidence from Federal Procurement
Do Expiring Budgets Lead to Wasteful Year-End Spending? Evidence from Federal Procurement
Date Written: March 5, 2016
Abstract
Many organizations have budgets that expire at the end of the fiscal year and may face incentives to rush to spend resources on low quality projects at year’s end. We test these predictions using data on procurement spending by the U.S. federal government. Spending in the last week of the year is 4.9 times higher than the rest-of-the-year weekly average, and year-end information technology projects have substantially lower quality ratings. We also analyze the gains from allowing agencies to roll over unused funds into the next fiscal year.
Keywords: year-end spending, government budgeting, procurement
JEL Classification: H0, H5, H56, H57, H61, L0, L2, L24
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
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