Bureaucracy, Infrastructure, and Economic Growth: Evidence from U.S. Cities During the Progressive Era

James E. Rauch
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引用次数: 202

Abstract

Recent work in the sociology of economic development has emphasized the establishment of a professional bureaucracy in place of political appointees as an important component of the institutional environment in which private enterprise can flourish. I hypothesize that establishment of such a bureaucracy will lengthen the period that public decision makers are willing to wait to realize the benefits of expenditures, leading to allocation of a greater proportion of government resources to long-gestation period projects such as infrastructure. This hypothesis can be tested using data generated by a `natural experiment' in the early part of this century, when a wave of municipal reform transformed the governments of many U.S. cities. Controlling for city and time effects, adoption of Civil Service is found to increase the share of total municipal expenditure allocated to road and sewer investment. Other estimates imply that this increased share raises the growth rate of city manufacturing employment by one-half percent per year.
官僚主义、基础设施和经济增长:来自进步时代美国城市的证据
经济发展社会学最近的工作强调建立一个专业官僚机构来代替政治任命,作为私营企业能够蓬勃发展的体制环境的一个重要组成部分。我假设,建立这样一个官僚机构将延长公共决策者愿意等待实现支出收益的时间,从而导致将更大比例的政府资源分配给基础设施等酝酿期较长的项目。这个假设可以用本世纪初的“自然实验”产生的数据来检验,当时一波市政改革改变了美国许多城市的政府。控制城市和时间效应,采用公务员制度可以增加分配给道路和下水道投资的市政总支出份额。其他估计表明,这一增加的份额将使城市制造业就业的增长率每年提高0.5%。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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