TY  - JOUR
AU  - Ehrenberg,Ronald G.
AU  - Ehrenberg,Randy A.
AU  - Smith,Christopher L.
AU  - Zhang,Liang
TI  - Why Do School District Budget Referenda Fail?
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 9088
PY  - 2002
Y2  - August 2002
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9088
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9088.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Ronald G. Ehrenberg
Cornell Higher Education Research Institute
271 Ives Hall East
Ithaca, NY  14853-3901
Tel: 607/255-3026
Fax: 607 255 4496
E-Mail: rge2@cornell.edu

Christopher Smith
Federal Reserve Board
Research Division
Stop # 80
20th & C Sts., NW
Washington, DC 20551-0001
E-Mail: Christopher.L.Smith@frb.gov

Liang Zhang
E-Mail: lz33@cornell.edu
AB  - Our paper analyzes historical data for New York State on the percentagee of school budget proposals that are defeated each year and panel data that we have collected on budget vote success for indvidual school districts in the state. We find that changes in state aid matter, but not as much as one might expect. Defeating a budget proposal in one year neither increases nor decreases the likelihood that voters will defeat a proposal the next year. Districts whose school board members have longer terms have lower probabilities of having their budget proposals defeated. Finally, measures of school district educational and financial performance do not appear to influence budget vote outcomes.
ER  -