Partisanship and Fiscal Policy in Economic Unions: Evidence from U.S. States
Partisanship of state level politicians affect the impact of federal fiscal policy in the U.S. Using data from close gubernatorial elections, we find partisan differences in the marginal propensity to spend federal transfers since the early 1980's: Republican governors spend less. A New Keynesian model of partisan states in a monetary union implies sizable aggregate income effects from these partisan differences. First, the transfer multiplier would rise by 0.60 if Republican governors were to spend as much from federal aid as do Democratic governors. Second, the observed changes in the share of Republican governors imply variation in the fiscal multiplier of 0.40. Local projection regressions support this prediction.
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Copy CitationGerald Carlino, Thorsten Drautzburg, Robert P. Inman, and Nicholas Zarra, "Partisanship and Fiscal Policy in Economic Unions: Evidence from U.S. States," NBER Working Paper 28425 (2021), https://doi.org/10.3386/w28425.Download Citation
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Published Versions
Gerald Carlino & Thorsten Drautzburg & Robert Inman & Nicholas Zarra, 2023. "Partisanship and Fiscal Policy in Economic Unions: Evidence from US States," American Economic Review, vol 113(3), pages 701-737. citation courtesy of 
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