| Sumario: | This article focuses on the geographic heterogeneity of public expenditure functions. The empirical estimation of public expenditure functions has been prominent in the quantitative public finance literature. Numerous scholars have ascertained the impact of population, density, population growth, income, and intergovernmental transfers on various definitions of public expenditures. Some have focused on SMSA's, others have focused on counties, both total and disaggregated, by function, expenditures have been analyzed. To show that such inter-region heterogeneity exists, one examines regional expenditure functions and test the null hypothesis that expenditure determinants operate in the same fashion for each region. The inter-regional differences are highlighted by examining the regression equations themselves. When one compares urban counties in the Northeast with urban counties in the North Central region, one finds substantially different expenditure responses to changes in all three variables. With the regions pooled, one finds that a dollar more of personal per capita income elicits eleven cents more in local expenditures.
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