Your local government is probably paving the wrong roads just because of a glitch in the survey they used.
When federal agencies randomly sample specific roads for data, local officials feel pressured to dump money into those specific spots. This 'measurement effect' means infrastructure is maintained based on what's being watched, not what's actually broken.
Managing What You Measure:
SSRN · 6440960
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