Federal, State, and Local Governments: Evaluating Their Separate Roles in Us Growth
26 Pages Posted: 4 Dec 2006
There are 2 versions of this paper
Federal, State, and Local Governments: Evaluating Their Separate Roles in Us Growth
Federal, State, and Local Governments: Evaluating Their Separate Roles in US Growth
Date Written: November 2006
Abstract
We use new US county level data (3,058 observations) from 1970 to 1998 to explore the relationship between economic growth and the size of government at three levels: federal, state and local. Using 3SLS-IV estimation we find that the size of federal, state and local government all either negatively correlate with or are uncorrelated with economic growth. We find no evidence that government is more efficient at more or less decentralized levels. Furthermore, while we cannot separate out the productive and redistributive services of government, we document that the county-level income distribution became slightly wider from 1970 to 1998. Our findings suggest that a release of government-employed labor inputs to the private sector would be growth-enhancing.
Keywords: Economic Growth, Federal Government, State Government, Local Government, Fiscal Federalism, Oates' Decentralization Theorem, County-Level Data
JEL Classification: O40, O11, O18, O51, R11, H50, H70
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?
Recommended Papers
-
Growth and Convergence Across the Us: Evidence from County-Level Data
By Matthew John Higgins, Daniel Levy, ...
-
Growth and Convergence Across the U.S.: Evidence from County-Level Data
By Matthew John Higgins, Daniel Levy, ...
-
Examining the Role of Economic Opportunity and Amenities in Explaining Population Redistribution
By Peter R. Mueser and Philip E. Graves
-
Sigma Convergence Versus Beta Convergence: Evidence from U.S. County-Level Data
By Andrew T. Young, Matthew John Higgins, ...
-
The Effects of Two-Year College on the Labor Market and Schooling Experiences of Young Men