One of the statements of purpose of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) was “to assist those most impacted by the recession.” To consider this facet, the grants-in-aid portion of the ARRA is assessed from the perspective of fiscal federalism. We estimate a trend-stationary autoregressive model of county-level wage income dynamics where each county is subject to a common shock (with county-specific factor loading) and an idiosyncratic shock. We then ask if counties that experienced larger negative wage income shocks during the Great Contraction subsequently received more transfers per capita in the form of grants-in-aid. The fact that the negative business cycle shocks pre-date the passage of the ARRA and subsequent disbursements allows identification of the risk-pooling channel of the grants before fiscal multiplier effects confound these two channels. We find statistically significant and economically large risk-pooling effects.

美国复苏与再投资法案 (ARRA) 的目的声明之一是“帮助那些受经济衰退影响最大的人”。考虑到这一方面，ARRA 的补助金部分是从财政联邦制的角度进行评估的。我们估计了县级工资收入动态的趋势平稳自回归模型，其中每个县都受到共同冲击（具有特定于县的因素载荷）和特殊冲击。然后，我们询问在大收缩期间经历了更大负工资收入冲击的县是否随后以补助金的形式获得了更多的人均转移支付。不利的商业周期冲击早于 ARRA 的通过和随后的支出，这一事实允许在财政乘数效应混淆这两个渠道之前确定赠款的风险分担渠道。我们发现统计上显着且经济上较大的风险分担效应。