Municipal Capital Maintenance and Fiscal Distress
提出并检验了财政困境导致公共基础设施维护不足的假说，利用生产决策框架分析官员行为，截面数据支持该假说。
This paper formalizes and empirically tests the hypothesis that the deficient maintenance of public infrastructure is caused by fiscal distress. We utilize a production-decision framework in which public officials combine maintenance and new capital to produce a desired level of capital services. The behavior implied in the fiscal distress hypothesis is treated as perverse deviations from the optimal production path. The empirical findings from cross-sectional expenditures data give support to the fiscal distress hypothesis.