Previous research using data on convictions for corruption-related crimes from the Public Integrity Section (PIN) of the Department of Justice points to a positive correlation between the amount of corruption in a state and the amount of federal funds provided to the state for natural disaster...

There is a long-standing scholarly literature on the electoral effects of campaign spending; nevertheless, the academic research offers only limited guidance for policy makers interested in campaign finance reform. In part, this is because existing studies have focused narrowly on some vexing...

The Supreme Court has long held that campaign finance regulations are permissible for the purpose of preventing corruption or the appearance of corruption. Yet the implied hypothesis that campaign finance reforms are effective tools for combating public corruption has gone essentially untested....

A growing empirical literature examines the causes and consequences of public corruption in the United States; however, most of these studies measure corruption using data on federal convictions that is of dubious quality and provenance. We document these concerns and describe an alternative...

We review the arguments and evidence for compelled financial disclosure by groups engaged in grassroots issue advocacy or active in ballot measures elections. There is no anti-corruption rationale for disclosure requirements, since these activities do not directly affect candidates for elective...

Elsewhere (Groseclose and Milyo, 2010), we examine a game where each legislator has preferences over (i) the resulting policy and (ii) how he or she votes. The latter preferences are especially important when the legislator is not pivotal. We show that when the game follows the normal rules of...

A 2009 observational study reported that private insurance status is associated with decreased mortality risk compared to no insurance. Employing the same statistical model but with more recent data, we observe a weaker and statistically insignificant relationship. However, Medicaid coverage is...

We exploit the existence of substantial variation in state policies toward public health insurance for children between 1990 and 2002 to estimate the economic and political determinants of state eligibility levels. Controlling for state and year effects, eligibility levels are not significantly...

Objectives. This article examines environmental policy attitudes, focusing on the differences in preferences across issue type (i.e., pollution, resource preservation) and geographical scale (i.e., local, national, global). In addition, we study whether an individuals trust in government...

Scholars have long argued that state legislative professionalism, or the provision of staff, legislator salary, and session length, has behavioral incentives for legislators and implications for legislative capacity. Scant attention, however, has been devoted to public attitudes on the provision...