Christopher R. Berry Barry C. Burden William G. Howell
Abstract
Empirical research on distributive politics emphasizes party and committee leaders in Congress. This paper highlights the president, who most credibly fills the role of the proposer in Baron and Ferejohn’s (1989) seminal model, and who has further opportunities to influence the distribution of federal outlays both later in the appropriations process and after a final bill is enacted. We analyze a large database that tracks the geographic spending of nearly every domestic program over a 21-year period. Using a district fixed-effects estimation strategy, we find only sporadic evidence that committee chairs, party leaders, and majority party members receive larger shares of federal outlays. Instead, we find consistent and robust evidence that districts receive systematically more spending when they are represented by legislators in the president’s party.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Harris School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago in its series Working Papers with number
0904.