Organizational Failure and Transfers in the Public Sector: Evidence from an Experiment in the Financing of Mental Health Care
利用俄亥俄州精神卫生保健融资改革的自然实验，估计地方政府对州政府转移支付激励的反应，发现地方政府对新激励有强烈响应，对公共经济学有广泛启示。
Intergovernmental transfers are potentially important tools for aligning the goals of lower levels of government, which produce public services, with those of higher levels of government, which finance these services. This paper makes use of a unique natural experiment in the design of intergovernmental grants to estimate the reactions of local government providers to the incentives contained in transfers from state government. The State of Ohio has dramatically altered the method by which local public mental health care is financed. The manner in which the grant mechanism has been altered allows for the estimation of income compensated responses of local governmental entities. The empirical results indicate strong responses to the new incentives, suggesting a broad set of applications in public economics.