Modelling the US Federal Spending Process: Overview and Implications

Dempster, M.A.H. & Wildavsky, A. (1983). Modelling the US Federal Spending Process: Overview and Implications. IIASA Research Report (Reprint). IIASA, Laxenburg, Austria: RR-83-004. Reprinted from The Grants Economy and Collective Consumption, R.C.O. Matthews and G.B. Stafford (eds), Macmillan Publishers Ltd, Basingstoke, UK, pp. 267-309 [1983].

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Abstract

The object of study is the US Federal budget process - an institutional process of increasing prominence in US and world affairs - which is unique in generating quantitative data for scholarly research. The authors first outline their rigorous, but simple, econometric models of how budget decisions are made, coordinated, and implemented and then trace the implications of their high-inertia view of the process for the US economic cycle. They propound a presidential and Congressional ambition model of current and postwar cyclical economic difficulties, including stagflation, in terms of a macroeconomic model of the US economy in which federal governmental expenditure is endogenous. The chapter concludes with speculation on the disastrous consequences for society of the growth of a sluggishly adaptable bureaucratic process operating in a rapidly changing economic and social environment.

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