The government doesn't fix the roads that are actually falling apart; they just fix whichever ones happened to make it onto an old survey list.
April 10, 2026
Original Paper
Managing What You Measure:
SSRN · 6440960
The Takeaway
When researchers randomly pick a road to study, local governments immediately start spending more money on it, even if a nearby road is in worse shape. The mere act of being watched changes where tax dollars go, regardless of actual infrastructure needs.
From the abstract
We study how federal information-collection requirements affect public infrastructure spending of local governments. Exploiting the introduction and revision of the federal survey on highway infrastructure, we find that county roads that are randomly sampled by the survey attract more local government spending. The increased spending is concentrated in capital outlays for road improvements and is somewhat pronounced for roads in poor condition. The spending seems successful in expanding the coun