The Impact of Federal Incentives on State Policy Innovation

Using 57 state public policies as the basis for analysis, this paper assesses the impact of federal incentives on the diffusion rates of these policies throughout the American states. Our analysis revealed that policies with federal incentives do diffuse substantially faster than policies that are the preserve of the states, even when we controlled for the functional area of the policy. Speed of policy diffusion also appears to be related to the time of the policy invention, although methodological considerations precluded a more systematic analysis of this factor.