We analyze the relationship between senate malapportionment and the allocation of the US federal budget to the states during the period 1978-2002. A substantial literature originating from the inuential paper by Atlas et al. (1995), using a within estimation methodology nds that small and overrepresented states get signi cantly larger shares of federal funds. Revisiting the econometric speci cation used by the current empiri- cal research, we show that the number of senators percapita is inappropriate to capture malapportionement in regressions using broad federal programs, and that the results ob- tained with this indicator are extremely non-robust to reasonable speci cation changes. In particular, senators percapita have a signi cant impact on federal spending only in re- gressions containing state xed e¤ects. Furthermore, the coefficients estimated using the within methodology are statistically di¤erent across states and, therefore, cannot be used to assess spending differentials between states. The magnitude and signi cance of those coe¢ cients suggest a within state-speci c inverse relationship between broad spending categories and population which is not systematically related to the size of the states and seems more compatible with incrementalist theories of budget allocation.
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Paper provided by University Library of Munich, Germany in its series MPRA Paper with number
5339.
Find related papers by JEL classification: H50 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - General H61 - Public Economics - - National Budget, Deficit, and Debt - - - Budget; Budget Systems H5 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies H59 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Other H76 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - Other Expenditure Categories H53 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Welfare Programs
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