Does Monitoring Local Government Fiscal Conditions Affect Outcomes? Evidence from Michigan

Thomas Luke Spreen and Caitlin M. Cheek

Public Finance Review, 2016, vol. 44, issue 6, 722-745

Abstract: The goal of this article is to assess whether state monitoring and reporting of local government fiscal condition causes improvement in the financial situation of local governments. From 2006 to 2011, Michigan scored the fiscal conditions of each of its local governments based on their performance across nine indicators of fiscal health. Using audited financial data, we construct a panel of several of those financial indicators for a sample of county and municipal governments in Michigan and neighboring states with no similar program. We employ a difference-in-differences methodology to test whether Michigan’s local governments performed better across the selected indicators relative to their peers in neighboring states. The results of the analysis show no significant change in the monitored indicators among Michigan’s local governments relative to local governments in control states. We largely duplicate the baseline results using propensity score matching.

Keywords: local government; financial condition; fiscal benchmarking; policy analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1091142115611743 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:pubfin:v:44:y:2016:i:6:p:722-745

DOI: 10.1177/1091142115611743

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Public Finance Review
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().