자료유형  

 학위논문

Control Number  

0016935096

International Standard Book Number  

9798380479103

Dewey Decimal Classification Number  

320

Main Entry-Personal Name  

Maurel, Arnaud Alexandre.

Publication, Distribution, etc. (Imprint  

[S.l.] : Columbia University., 2023

Publication, Distribution, etc. (Imprint  

Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2023

Physical Description  

1 online resource(173 p.)

General Note  

Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 85-04, Section: A.

General Note  

Advisor: Marshall, John;Kasara, Kimuli.

Dissertation Note  

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Columbia University, 2023.

Restrictions on Access Note  

This item must not be sold to any third party vendors.

Summary, Etc.  

요약Borrowing money is a core instrument of governments to fund goods with high front costs and long-term benefits. Scholars have, however, primarily associated public debt with shortsighted policies by office-seeking politicians. The three essays in this dissertation investigate the determinants and outcomes of popular preferences for investment-oriented public debt using novel voting, survey, and budgetary data. The first essay asks: Is a community more amenable to borrowing when its time horizon shortens? Existing theories argue that individuals with shorter time horizons, like seniors, have a higher inclination towards borrowing because they overvalue current consumption and discount future costs. I verify this assumption by studying how population aging affects support for debt-funded investments. Using novel data sets on U.S. state and local bond referendums over six decades, I show that, conversely, aging decreases support for debt-funded investments. Contrary to mainstream predictions, an original conjoint survey experiment further demonstrates that seniors do not have a greater preference for policies with longer repayment maturities and shorter benefit periods. Rather, aging lowers support for investments by increasing fiscal conservatism and shifting consumption away from capital-intensive goods. The effect of aging varies depending on which age groups cohabit with seniors. In particular, aging communities experiencing an influx of nonrelative children show greater opposition to new investments, while increased contact with relative children has no detectable effect on their support for investments. These findings suggest that population aging can complicate the construction of political coalitions over investments, particularly in communities with diverse age distributions. The second essay inquires: Do popular preferences affect how governments fund policies? Policy funding is often presented as technical and hardly influenced by voters. I study this assumption by investigating the effect of population aging on U.S. municipal budgets between 1970 and 2017 with the use of data on municipal finances and mayors' characteristics. In contrast, I find that aging increases appetite for consumption-oriented policies, leading to more short-term budgeting. When a municipality's population ages, it substitutes current expenditures for capital spending, shortens its debt maturity, and favors liquid revenues over long-term borrowing. Ultimately, this translates into lower indebtedness and higher property tax revenues. In contrast, its expenditure levels and distribution between policies remain stable as seniors' fiscal conservatism constrains surges in spending, and seniors' interest in property values limits cuts in municipal amenities. The effects of aging are not uniform, as municipalities ruled by elderly mayors implement debt policies more aligned with seniors' preferences. These results contradict the dire budgetary predictions associated with aging and show that seniors' ideological and economic motives can counterbalance their distributional demands. They also illustrate that the preferences of minorities are better represented when they elect politicians who resemble them.The last essay questions: Do voters care about how a policy is funded? Even if citizens can grasp the technicalities of public finances, policy funding may still not matter to them. Indeed, the Ricardian equivalence argues that people are indifferent about whether a policy is funded by debt or taxation because they internalize the future costs of debt repayment in their bequests. Using a novel dataset of 22,000 local referendums and two original conjoint survey experiments, I demonstrate that, conversely, voters prefer financing policies by small tax increases rather than borrowing. My surveys also reveal that respondents discriminate against policies with longer repayment periods. This result contradicts both the Ricardian equivalence's assumption that people are indifferent to how policies allocate costs over time and the premise that people overlook future borrowing costs. Time preferences are important to explain opinions regarding debt and taxation, as each funding method distributes costs and benefits differently over time. Specifically, people's resistance to long repayment periods lowers support for debt-funded projects. Variations in preferences between debt and tax remain after accounting for their temporal differences. My analyses indicate that preferences do not vary by policy content or relative to personal financial investments, although conservative individuals display greater support for borrowing than liberals.

Subject Added Entry-Topical Term  

Political science.

Subject Added Entry-Topical Term  

Public policy.

Subject Added Entry-Topical Term  

Finance.

Index Term-Uncontrolled  

American politics

Index Term-Uncontrolled  

Local politics

Index Term-Uncontrolled  

Political economy

Index Term-Uncontrolled  

Public economics

Index Term-Uncontrolled  

Public finance

Added Entry-Corporate Name  

Columbia University Political Science

Host Item Entry  

Dissertations Abstracts International. 85-04A.

Host Item Entry  

Dissertation Abstract International

Electronic Location and Access  

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Control Number  

joongbu:640817