Bribery or Just Desserts? Evidence on the Influence of Congressional Voting Patterns on PAC Contributions from Exogenous Variation in the Sex Mix of Legislator Offspring
Evidence on the relationship between political contributions and legislators' voting behavior is marred by concerns about endogeneity in the estimation process. Using a legislator's offspring sex mix as an exogenous variable, we employ a two-stage least squares estimation procedure to predict the effect of voting behavior on political contributions. Following previous research, we find that a legislator's proportion daughters has a significant effect on voting behavior for women's issues, as measured by score in the "Congressional Record on Choice" issued by NARAL Pro-Choice America. In the second stage, we make a unique contribution by demonstrating a significant impact of exogenous voting behavior on PAC contributions, lending credibility to the hypothesis that Political Action Committees respond to legislators' voting patterns by "rewarding" political candidates that vote in line with the positions of the PAC, rather than affecting or "bribing" those same votes -- at least in this high profile policy domain.
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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
13945.
Length: Date of creation: Apr 2008 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:13945
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Find related papers by JEL classification: H11 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - Structure and Scope of Government J18 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Public Policy K0 - Law and Economics - - General
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