Trends and Deviations in Federal, State and Local Finance

Overview & Synopsis

This paper contains a descriptive analysis o+ real per capita annual revenues, expenditures, deficits, debt levels and capital expenditures for federal, state and local government finance in the United States for the rears 1952-83. It summarizes each time series as a deterministic trend and an ARIM characterization of the deviations around trend. These summaries demonstrate that civilian capital outlays are falling at an accelerating pace in ail levels of government; federal government expenditures and debt are expanding at an accelerating rate; local special districts are also growing quadratically; state governments have a continuing surplus of revenues over expenditures; and local governments depend upon intergovernmental revenues to maintain balance between revenues and expenditures while reducing debt. Stochastic persistence tends to increase at more disaggregate levels of government. Expenditures tend to have longer lags than do revenues.