American State Constitutions: A historical Series

美国各州宪法：历史系列

• 批准号: 9709490
• 负责人: John Wallis
• 金额: $ 17.42万
• 依托单位: National Bureau of Economic Research Inc
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 1997
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1997-08-01 至 2002-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9709490&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: American; State; Constitutions; historical; Series

Since 1776, American states have continually amended and revised their constitutions. States have experimented with a wide variety of suffrage, representation, legislative structures, judicial structures, corporate law, and public finance. The constitutions themselves are a record of fundamental institutional change in American history. It is a record that not only reflects changes in the way Americans think about their governments, but a record of the changing institutional constraints on the American economy. Despite its inherent interest, there is currently no readily accessible consistent historical series on the provisions of state constitutions. This research will fill that gap by constructing a consistent, time series of state constitutional provisions from 1776 to the present. Printed source materials are available from compilations of state constitutions. The product of this research will be a detailed description of constitutional provisions, and a computer accessible data base of constitutional restrictions made publicly available through a Web site at the University of Maryland, linked to public data bases at the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research. In addition, constitutional limitations on government debt will be investigated in detail. The simplest question is whether these debt restrictions actually work.. The fundamental focus of this research is to solve the problem of endogeneity between the level and structure of debt and the creation of constitutional restrictions on debt issue. The issue of endogeneity is central not only to understanding how constitutional restrictions, like a balanced budget amendment, may work. It is central to understanding the interaction of economic behavior and institutional change over time.

自1776年以来，美国国家一直对其宪法进行修改和修订。 各州已经尝试了各种选举权，代表，立法结构，司法结构，公司法和公共财政。 宪法本身是美国历史上基本制度变化的记录。 这是一张记录，不仅反映了美国人对政府的思考方式的变化，而且还反映了对美国经济不断变化的制度限制的记录。 尽管它具有固有的兴趣，但目前尚无关于州宪法规定的一致历史系列。 这项研究将通过构建从1776年到现在的一致的州宪法规定的一致，时间序列来填补这一空白。 可以从州宪法的汇编中获得印刷的原始材料。 这项研究的产物将是对宪法规定的详细描述，以及通过马里兰州大学的网站公开提供的宪法限制的计算机数据库，与国家经济研究局和政治和社会研究联盟的公共数据基础有关。 此外，将详细调查对政府债务的宪法限制。 最简单的问题是这些债务限制是否实际上有效。这项研究的基本重点是解决债务水平和结构之间的内生性问题，以及建立债务问题的宪法限制。 内生性问题不仅是了解宪法限制，例如平衡预算修正案，这可能是如何奏效的。 这是了解经济行为和机构变化随着时间的变化的核心。