中文摘要
关于政治分肥支出，存在两种常见观点。一种观点认为，政治分肥支出以牺牲社会福利为代价使特殊利益集团受益，因而与负责任的政策制定背道而驰，尤其是在危机时期。另一种观点认为，政治分肥能够“润滑立法机器”，使原本无法通过的社会有益立法得以颁布。本文重新考察这两种论点，并表明它们取决于立法者之间利益与信息异质性的性质。在信息完全但意识形态存在异质性的情况下，政策妥协可能足以促成有益立法获得通过。正如传统观点所认为的那样，政治分肥通常会降低福利，但我们也刻画了政治分肥确实能够“润滑立法机器”并改善社会福利的情形。当行动者不仅在意识形态上存在异质性，而且在信息上也存在异质性时，政治分肥的配置可能对通过适应当前情势的立法至关重要。其作用并不只是诱使立法者接受他们认为有害的立法，还在于传递政策变革必要性的信息——在没有政治分肥的情况下，这类信息可能根本无法传递。此外，恰恰因为公共品最具价值，并且掌握信息的议程设定者希望传递这一信息，所以政治分肥会在公共品最具价值时出现。此外，信息之所以能够得到传递，可能正是出于政治分肥广受批评的原因，即它使特殊利益集团受益。
Abstract
There are two common views of pork barrel spending. One is that pork barrel spending benefits special interests at the expense of social welfare, hence antithetical to responsible policy making, especially in times of crisis. An alternative is that pork “greases the legislative wheels” making possible the enactment of socially beneficial legislation that would otherwise not pass. In this paper we reexamine both arguments and show that they depend on the nature of heterogeneity of interests and information across legislators. Under full information, but with heterogeneous ideology, policy compromise may be sufficient to pass beneficial legislation. Pork typically reduces welfare as in the conventional wisdom, but we also characterize cases where pork can indeed “grease the wheels” and improve social welfare. When agents are heterogeneous not only in their ideology, but also their information, allocation of pork may be crucial to passage of legislation appropriate to the situation. It does so not simply by inducing legislators to accept legislation they view as harmful, but also by conveying information about the necessity of policy change, where it may be impossible to convey such information in the absence of pork. Moreover, pork will be observed when the public good is most valuable precisely because it is valuable and the informed agenda setter wants to convey this information. Moreover, information may be conveyed for the reason pork is widely criticized, that is, because it benefits special interests.