Do Institutions Matter? The Impact of Budget Expertise on State Fiscal Responsibility
研究了州立法机构中非党派财政办公室的设计与州预算健康之间的关系，发现这些机构的存在并未显著影响州的财政状况，质疑了立法者如何使用非党派预算信息。
Abstract Do governmental institutions constrain state actors? I investigate this question by examining the relationship between the design of state legislative fiscal offices and the health of state budgets. These budgetary bodies serve a supporting role for legislatures, designed to advance sound fiscal policy and sustainable public finance. With an original data set encompassing all state legislative budgetary bodies from 1963 to 2014, I estimate the causal effects of nonpartisan fiscal offices on budget surpluses with a generalized difference-in-differences estimator. My results show that the presence of these fiscal offices within legislatures does not affect a state’s fiscal well-being. This result holds even when legislative fiscal offices are relatively empowered in the budget process, raising doubts about how state lawmakers use nonpartisan budgetary information in funding the government.