Fiscal Effects of the Voter Initiative in the First Half of the Twentieth Century

This paper compares the fiscal policy of initiative and noninitiative states in the first half of the twentieth century. States with initiatives had higher combined state and local expenditure after controlling for income and other demographics but a lower ratio of state to local expenditure. This, together with existing evidence from later in the century, suggests that the voter initiative does not have a consistent effect on the overall size of state and local government. However, it does systematically lead to more decentralized expenditure.