EMPIRICAL-EVIDENCE ON THE PUBLICNESS OF STATE LEGISLATIVE ACTIVITIES

Legislation would be a Samuelsonian public good if the cost of creatin g legislation is not a function of the number of people covered by the legislation. A straightforward test of Samuelsonian publicness is und ertaken by estimating the cost of producing legislation as a function of population and other variables, using cross-sectional data from the states of the United States for the years 1965, 1975, and 1985. The e mpirical results indicate that while legislation does have some degree of publicness, legislation is mostly a private good, and that it has been becoming increasingly less public over time.