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School Spirit: Legislator School Ties and State Funding for Higher Education

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  • Aaron K. Chatterji
  • Joowon Kim
  • Ryan C. McDevitt

Abstract

We explore a new mechanism to understand state funding for public colleges and universities by leveraging data on the educational experiences of state legislators, specifically if and where they received postsecondary education. Using novel, hand-collected data from 2002 through 2014, we provide comprehensive documentation for the first time in the literature on the educational backgrounds of state legislators. We find a statistically significant, positive association between the share of legislators who attended their states' public institutions and state funding for their entire public higher-education system. We also find a similar positive relationship between the share of state legislators who attended particular campuses of the state's public university system and funding for those campuses. This relationship is more pronounced among publicly educated legislators who represent legislative districts close to their alma mater's district, and becomes most consequential when the legislator's district contains his or her alma mater. We discuss the implications of our findings for academic studies on how politics and legislators' personal experiences in influence support for higher education.

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  • Aaron K. Chatterji & Joowon Kim & Ryan C. McDevitt, 2018. "School Spirit: Legislator School Ties and State Funding for Higher Education," NBER Working Papers 24818, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:24818
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    2. Artés, Joaquín & Richter, Brian Kelleher & Timmons, Jeffrey F., 2019. "The Value of Political Geography: Evidence from the Redistricting of Firms," Working Papers 291, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H0 - Public Economics - - General
    • H3 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents
    • H52 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Education
    • H75 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Government: Health, Education, and Welfare
    • I23 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Higher Education; Research Institutions
    • I28 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Government Policy

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