According to standard economic theory, the income effect on the level of local public expenditure of a grant from the central government to a local government is not superior to that of a transfer payment to the residents in the local area, given the amounts of total money the same in the both cases. This is well known as an equivalent theorem asserted by Bradford and Oates. However, empirical evidences have had devided views on this theorem. Some of them support it. But, some others observe that intergovernmental grants increase expenditure on local public goods more than transfer payments do. They call this“the flypaper effect”.
Thus, considerably large efforts by economists working in public finance have been devoted to give economically rational explanations to this discrepancy between theory and practice. Economists, however, have seldom made reference to the communicative aspect of political process. The political messages involved in a grant would generally differ from those in a transfer.
Suppose a parent giving a kid money in two cases. In the first, he or she says, “I'll give you some money, if you buy books”. In the second, “I'll give you money. You may buy anything you like”. Whether would the parent be successful or not in educating the kid and in raising its level of expenditure on books more than inthe second case? It would much depend on their communication. The kid might buy more books, or the same, or even less if their relationship is a very bad one. The influence of communication is often very unpredictable. Nevertheless, there are no grounds in general on which we can believe in the neutrality of communication.
A typical collective decision making in a democratic political process has two stages, that is, the first stage of political argument and the following second stage of voting. The first stage is a set-up for making individual frames of reference adjusted to each other. This is a process groping for a consensus. In this phase of collective decision making, it is quite natural and reasonable to suppose that there is some room in each individual frame of reference for social adjustment by communication. If there is no such room, communication would be no more than mere exchange of signs and political argument would be almost of nouse. However, this communicative aspect of political process remains out of economic postulate where each individual preference system is supposed to be given.
When we take a different point of view on preference formation, especially preference formation as for public issues, it will leads us to quite different understandings of public choice. This paper is an example of such attempt, giving a different explanation to the flypaper effect.
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