It is common practice to assign revenue to accomplish specific governmental tasks in general and to provide transport infrastructure in particular. However, neither the literature in public administration nor in public choice has reached a consensus about the effects that earmarking has on efficiency. Building on earlier public choice models, we argue that this mechanism prevents budget debates from occurring and reduces the incentives for ministers to monitor the colleagues whose budgets are financed by earmarked revenues. These latter tend to overuse public resources, thus increasing inefficiency. A stochastic frontier model fed with data from Swiss cantonal ministries of transport from 2000 to 2016 tests this hypothesis. The results reveal a negative effect of earmarking on efficiency. For every 1,000 additional Swiss francs per capita financed out of an earmarked fund, the input requirement increases by 5.4 percent on average.

中文翻译：

---

政府收入专项拨款如何影响道路建设和维护的效率

通常的做法是分配收入以完成一般的特定政府任务，特别是提供运输基础设施。然而，无论是公共行政领域的文献还是公共选择领域的文献都没有就指定用途对效率的影响达成共识。在早期公共选择模型的基础上，我们认为这种机制防止了预算辩论的发生，并减少了部长监督预算由专项收入资助的同事的动机。后者往往会过度使用公共资源，从而导致效率低下。使用瑞士各州交通运输部 2000 年至 2016 年数据的随机前沿模型验证了这一假设。结果揭示了指定用途对效率的负面影响。对于每 1，