Are State Governments Roadblocks to Federal Stimulus? Evidence on the Flypaper Effect of Highway Grants in the 2009 Recovery Act
研究了2009年美国复苏法案中联邦高速公路拨款对州政府支出的影响，发现州政府不仅没有挪用资金，反而超比例增加了高速公路支出，且政治捐款多的州支出更多。
This paper examines how state governments adjusted spending in response to the large temporary increase in federal highway grants under the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The mechanism used to apportion ARRA highway grants to states allows one to isolate exogenous changes in these grants. The results indicate that states increased highway spending over 2009 to 2011 more than dollar-for-dollar with the ARRA grants they received. Rent-seeking efforts are shown to help explain this result: states with more political contributions from the public works sector to the governor and state legislators tended to spend more out of their ARRA highway funds than other states.