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Who Becomes a Member of Congress? Evidence From De-Anonymized Census Data
Thompson, Daniel M. - 2019
economically unrepresentative American politicians were in the 20th century, and why. Future members under the age of 18 in 1940 … politicians, future members of Congress between the ages of 18 and 40 in 1940 were higher-earners and more educated, indicating … that socioeconomic background alone does not explain the differences between politicians and non-politicians. Examining a …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012480102
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An Experiment in Candidate Selection
Casey, Katherine - 2019
Are ordinary citizens or political party leaders better positioned to select candidates? While the American primary system lets citizens choose, most democracies rely instead on party officials to appoint or nominate candidates. The consequences of these distinct design choices are unclear:...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012480106
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Abstentions and Social Networks in Congress
Battaglini, Marco - 2020
We study the extent to which personal connections among legislators influence abstentions in the U.S. Congress. Our analysis is conducted by observing representatives' abstention for the universe of roll call votes held on bills in the 109th-113th Congresses. Our results show that a legislator's...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012481125
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A Graphical Lasso Approach to Estimating Network Connections : The Case of U.S. Lawmakers
Battaglini, Marco - 2020
In this paper, we propose a new approach to the estimation of social networks and we apply it to the estimation of productivity spillovers in the U.S. Congress. Social networks such as the social connections among lawmakers are not generally directly observed, they can be recovered only using...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012481412
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Carbon Geography : The Political Economy of Congressional Support for Legislation Intended to Mitigate Greenhouse Gas Production
Cragg, Michael I. - 2009
Stringent regulation for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions will impose different costs across geographical regions. Low-carbon, environmentalist states, such as California, would bear less of the incidence of such regulation than high-carbon Midwestern states. Such anticipated costs are likely...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012463686
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Media versus Special Interests
Dyck, Alexander - 2008
We argue that profit-maximizing media help overcome the problem of "rational ignorance" highlighted by Downs (1957) and in so doing make elected representatives more sensitive to the interests of general voters. By collecting news and combining it with entertainment, media are able to inform...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012464287
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Freedom of Speech, Deterrence, and Compellence in the Parliament
Altindag, Duha Tore; Mocan, Naci; Zhang, Jie - National Bureau of Economic Research - 2021
performance of politicians. Leveraging a Constitutional Amendment, the adoption of which lifted the immunity of 132 of the 550 …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012496085
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Why Are There So Many Divided Senate Delegations?
Alesina, Alberto - 1991
The last three decades have witnessed a sharp increase in the number of states with spilt Senate delegations, featuring two senators of different parties. In addition, there is evidence that senators of different parties do not cluster in the middle: they are genuinely polarized. We propose a...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012475353
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Influencing Connected Legislators
Battaglini, Marco - 2016
This paper studies how interest groups allocate campaign contributions when congressmen are connected by social ties. We establish conditions for the existence of a unique Nash equilibrium in pure strategies for the contribution game and characterize the associated allocation of the interest...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012455941
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How Do Voters Matter? Evidence from US Congressional Redistricting
Jones, Daniel B. - 2016
How does the partisan composition of an electorate impact the policies adopted by an elected representative? We take advantage of variation in the partisan composition of Congressional districts stemming from Census-initiated redistricting in the 1990's, 2000's, and 2010's. Using this variation,...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012456153