The polcy agenda project (PAP) data base shows for year 2000 an annual percentage change of MINUS 218 PER CENT (!!!). I was wondering all the time, how this can be.
In 1999, budget authority was 981 million dollars for energy (subtopic code 270). In 2000, bugdet authority was -1184 million dollars. So, there were earnings instead of spending.
Mathematically, the PAP data is correct.
But what is the reason why suddenly the Government makes money with energy instead of paying for it? Or is it a mistake in the data?
The subtopics of the PAP do not help much: We can see that the earnings come from the subtopic "energy supply" (code 271).
To find this out what is really going on, I wrote a little scipt to compare the PAP data the official data from the Office of Management and Budget:
As can be seen, the data is identicall (good job Bryan!).
But now we can have a more detailed look on the accounts that are combined in subtopic 271.
And here we see, that the negative spending comes (mostly) from the account:
Rural Electrification and Telecommunications Liquidating Account
After consulting Lord google, my impression is that the sudden warm rain of money in 2000 might be connected to changing bylaws of the Rural Telephone Bank. As far as I understand the case, the bank changed the structure of loans in 2000 and therefore suddenly had more capital than before. But this is just a guess. Perhaps someone has a more convincing explanation?
Summing up:
The PAP-data is correct!
We have a little scipt to get the original data and this might be usefull for many other things ;-)
Perhaps, we all should think more about the nature of budget punctuations: Is a change in the bylaws of a bank (if this was the case at all!) a good indicator for policy changes? On the other hand: Why not?
In 1999, budget authority was 981 million dollars for energy (subtopic code 270). In 2000, bugdet authority was -1184 million dollars. So, there were earnings instead of spending.
Mathematically, the PAP data is correct.
But what is the reason why suddenly the Government makes money with energy instead of paying for it? Or is it a mistake in the data?
The subtopics of the PAP do not help much: We can see that the earnings come from the subtopic "energy supply" (code 271).
To find this out what is really going on, I wrote a little scipt to compare the PAP data the official data from the Office of Management and Budget:
# comparing OMB energy budget with PAP energy budget # OMB OMB <- read.csv("http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BUDGET-2015-DB/csv/BUDGET-2015-DB-1.csv", as.is=TRUE) OMB$Subfunction.Code <- as.factor(OMB$Subfunction.Code) summary(OMB$Subfunction.Code) energyOMB = OMB[which(OMB$Subfunction.Code %in% c("271","272","274","276")),] toNumeric <- function (x) { x <- gsub(",", "", x) x <- as.numeric(x) x <- unlist(sapply(x, function (y) ifelse(y !=0, y <- y/1000, y <- 0))) } energyOMB[,c(14:56)] <- sapply(energyOMB[,c(14:56)], toNumeric) sapply(energyOMB, class) library(zoo) Year = c(1977:2019) energyOMBt = zoo(sapply(energyOMB[,c(14:56)], sum), Year) # PAP PAP <- read.csv("http://www.utexas.edu/cola/_webservices/policyagendas/budget/instances.csv?from=1945&to=2014", as.is=T) energyPAP = subset(PAP, TopicCode==270) Year = c(min(energyPAP$Year):max(energyPAP$Year)) energyPAPt = zoo(energyPAP$CurrYrDllr, Year) plot(energyOMBt) lines(energyPAPt, col="red")
As can be seen, the data is identicall (good job Bryan!).
But now we can have a more detailed look on the accounts that are combined in subtopic 271.
And here we see, that the negative spending comes (mostly) from the account:
Rural Electrification and Telecommunications Liquidating Account
After consulting Lord google, my impression is that the sudden warm rain of money in 2000 might be connected to changing bylaws of the Rural Telephone Bank. As far as I understand the case, the bank changed the structure of loans in 2000 and therefore suddenly had more capital than before. But this is just a guess. Perhaps someone has a more convincing explanation?
Summing up:
The PAP-data is correct!
We have a little scipt to get the original data and this might be usefull for many other things ;-)
Perhaps, we all should think more about the nature of budget punctuations: Is a change in the bylaws of a bank (if this was the case at all!) a good indicator for policy changes? On the other hand: Why not?
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