Author: Wenchi Wei

Abstract: This research examines U.S. local governments’ fiscal slack in a framework involving the political, budgetary, and managerial dimensions, each of which is operationalized by an indicator. We use an unbalanced panel of Massachusetts municipalities as the research sample and collect data from the state government and through five rounds of local government surveys. We find that voters’ pro-spending preferences negatively affect the size of local government fiscal slack and that governments’ budgetary gaps exert a positive impact. Moreover, the effects of voters’ pro-spending preferences and governments’ budgetary gaps are moderated by a professional managerial structure inside government.

Link: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14719037.2020.1764085