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Does Congressional experience in US governors influence state transfers?

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  • Harry Pickard

    (Department of Economics, University of Sheffield)

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between US governors who have previously served as a member of Congress and the federal transfers to their state. I assemble a novel dataset of governors political background and match this to federal transfer data from 1950 to 2008. Governors with Congressional experience have 0.8 percentage points more transfers to their state. I find no evidence of problematic trends or selection issues. Moreover, the result is robust to outliers in the data and many robustness checks.

Suggested Citation

  • Harry Pickard, 2018. "Does Congressional experience in US governors influence state transfers?," Working Papers 2018014, The University of Sheffield, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:shf:wpaper:2018014
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    File URL: http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/economics/research/serps/articles/2018_014
    File Function: First version, September 2018
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Career experience; Personal characteristics; Transfers; Congress; Leaders;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D78 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Positive Analysis of Policy Formulation and Implementation
    • H30 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - General
    • H71 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue

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