The Economic Case for Limits to Government
论证了在特定条件下，选民通过税收或支出限制来控制政府规模是合理的经济反应，基于选民对公共服务成本和收益的不确定性以及代理问题。
In June of 1978, the voters of California approved Proposition 13, restricting the rate of local property taxation to no more than 1 percent of 1975 market values. In November 1978, the voters of Michigan approved the Headlee Amendment, which limited state revenues from own sources to a fixed share of state personal income. In November of 1980, Massachusetts voters followed the lead of California and required all cities and towns to limit their taxation to a rate of 22 percent of full and fair cash value. Numerous hypotheses have been advanced and analyzed to explain the emergence of these new restrictions on fiscal choice. The results point to two explanations: voters feel governments are too big, providing more services than what they prefer, or governments spend too much on redistributive activities to help the poor and, through higher wages, to help public employees themselves.' The response to this perceived failure of government has been to propose-and in California, Michigan, and Massachusetts to approve-absolute limits to government expenditures. The question I wish to address here is whether a compelling economic argument can be advanced for such a policy response, politics and personalities aside. The answer, I think, is yes, but particular preconditions must apply. First, and perhaps most importantly, is the inability of citizens to directly control the provision of public services. Responsibility for providing public goods is delegated to agents of the voter, and these agents-be they bureaucrats or elected representatives-have their own objectives and an ability to act upon them to the possible disadvantage of the voters. Second, without direct control over public outputs, voters must use indirect controls through the manipulation of their appointed agents. These indirect controls take two general forms: price incentives or quantity restrictions. Third, the choice of either of these indirect controls must take place before the agent acts to provide public goods. Further, voters must often make their choice of a price or quantity control before the benefits or costs of the public service are known to them with certainty. Agents, however, can wait to observe true benefits and coststhat is why we use agents-and then provide a level of public services in response to costs, benefits, and the voters' chosen control. Voter uncertainty over benefits and costs can be interpreted as placing the voter within a constitutional perspective where a voter's precise position in society, that is, his or her benefits and costs, are unknown when choosing a control. Geoffrey Brennan and James Buchanan (ch. 1) were the first to really stress this important point. Fourth, if benefit and cost uncertainty is predominantly over the position (rather than slope) of the marginal benefit and marginal cost schedules and if the marginal benefit schedule is relatively steep (loosely, an inelastic demand curve) while the marginal cost schedule is relatively flat (an elastic supply curve), then quantity controls on agents' behavior through tax or spending limitations will be the preferred control. These four preconditions strike me as quite plausible. Rather than just an emotional reaction to a peculiar configuration of political and economic circumstances, Proposition 13, the Headlee Amendment, and Proposition 24 may be perfectly reasoned responses to a failure in the politi*Professor, University of Pennsylvania, and research associate, the National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. 'An alternative hypothesis which has been tested and generally rejected attributes voter approval to a desire to alter the tax mix away from property taxation and towards other taxes. What approving voters really want, it seems, is increased government efficiency and less redistribution. See the recent studies by Jack Citrin; Paul Courant, Edward Gramlich, and Daniel Rubinfeld; and Helen Ladd and Julie Wilson.