This paper tests various hypotheses about distributive politics by studying the distribution of federal spending across U.S. states over the period 1978-2002. We improve on previous work by using survey data to measure the share of voters in each state that are Democrats, Republicans, and...

Despite evidence that modern democracies systematically shortchange public investment goods, relatively little theoretical work exists to explain this phenomenon. We build on Baron and Ferejohn's (American Political Science Review, 83(4) (1989) 1181--1206) bargaining model to describe public...