Nov
22
The Local Consequences of Federal Mandates
Rhiannon Jerch is finishing her Ph.D. at Cornell. I serve on her dissertation committee and we have co-authored this JPUBE paper together. This blog post will discuss her job market paper.
She studies the long run urban growth consequences of the Clean Water Act's mandate in the early 1970s that cities improve their water quality through treating their wastewater.
In the absence of this mandate, how would cities have set their budget expenditures? Millions of Americans live in small cities (cities with fewer than 150,000 people) that are not suburbs of bigger cities. The local government in such cities collects tax revenue and receives transfers from the federal government and state government and uses these resources to provide basic services to their constituents.
She studies the long run urban growth consequences of the Clean Water Act's mandate in the early 1970s that cities improve their water quality through treating their wastewater.
In the absence of this mandate, how would cities have set their budget expenditures? Millions of Americans live in small cities (cities with fewer than 150,000 people) that are not suburbs of bigger cities. The local government in such cities collects tax revenue and receives transfers from the federal government and state government and uses these resources to provide basic services to their constituents.
