The Effect of “Federal -Aid Swap” Programs and Davis-Bacon Prevailing Wages on Highway Construction Costs and Contractor Composition: Evidence From Iowa

Q2 Arts and Humanities Labor Studies Journal Pub Date : 2021-11-24 DOI:10.1177/0160449X211049477

Frank P. Manzo

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引用次数: 1

Abstract

“Federal-aid swap” programs allow states and local governments to bypass federal Davis-Bacon prevailing wages and Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) goals by exchanging federal funds that have been allocated to highway projects with state funds. The Iowa Department of Transportation approved a federal-aid swap program in February 2018. Using data on more than 1,200 highway construction projects in Iowa from 2016 to 2020, I find that the cost of projects in the federal-aid swap program are not statistically different from those that were not swapped, after accounting for project size and complexity, project type, and project location. Regression results indicate that Davis-Bacon prevailing wages and DBE goals have no effect on total construction costs. However, the federal-aid swap program is statistically associated with a decrease in the likelihoods that a project is covered by the Davis-Bacon Act by 10 percentage points and DBE goals by 4 percentage points. Because the payment of Davis-Bacon prevailing wages is statistically associated with an 8 percentage-point decrease in the chances that a highway project is awarded to an out-of-state contractor, the federal-aid swap program may have increased the market share of out-of-state contractors at the expense of Iowa-based contractors.

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“联邦援助互换”计划和Davis Bacon盛行的工资对公路建设成本和承包商组成的影响：来自爱荷华州的证据

“联邦援助互换”计划允许州和地方政府通过将分配给高速公路项目的联邦资金与州资金交换，绕过联邦戴维斯-培根现行工资和弱势企业(DBE)目标。爱荷华州交通部于2018年2月批准了一项联邦援助互换计划。使用爱荷华州2016年至2020年1200多个高速公路建设项目的数据，我发现，在考虑了项目规模和复杂性、项目类型和项目位置之后，联邦援助交换计划中的项目成本与未交换的项目成本在统计上没有差异。回归结果表明，戴维斯-培根现行工资和DBE目标对总建设成本没有影响。然而，从统计数据来看，联邦援助交换计划与项目被戴维斯-培根法案覆盖的可能性下降了10个百分点，DBE目标下降了4个百分点有关。由于戴维斯-培根的现行工资在统计上与高速公路项目被授予州外承包商的机会降低了8个百分点有关，联邦援助交换计划可能以牺牲爱荷华州承包商为代价，增加了州外承包商的市场份额。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Labor Studies Journal Social Sciences-Sociology and Political Science

CiteScore

1.50

自引率

0.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： The Labor Studies Journal is the official journal of the United Association for Labor Education and is a multi-disciplinary journal publishing research on work, workers, labor organizations, and labor studies and worker education in the US and internationally. The Journal is interested in manuscripts using a diversity of research methods, both qualitative and quantitative, directed at a general audience including union, university, and community based labor educators, labor activists and scholars from across the social sciences and humanities. As a multi-disciplinary journal, manuscripts should be directed at a general audience, and care should be taken to make methods, especially highly quantitative ones, accessible to a general reader.