Kosher Pork
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 policymaking, 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, with pork only lowering social welfare. In contrast, when agents are heterogeneous in both their ideology and in their information, allocation of pork may be crucial to passage of legislation appropriate to the situation. However, it does so not simply by bribing 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
Year of publication: |
2022
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Authors: | Ilzetzki, Ethan ; Drazen, Allan |
Publisher: |
[S.l.] : SSRN |
Subject: | Wohlfahrtsanalyse | Welfare analysis | Politisches Ziel | Political goal | Öffentliche Güter | Public goods | Asymmetrische Information | Asymmetric information | Verantwortung | Responsibility | Unvollkommene Information | Incomplete information | Politische Ethik | Political ethics |
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