Staff expenditures in the U.S. Congress increased exponentially from 1940 to 1980, but have remained roughly constant since. A theoretical model of Congressional expenditures, bureaucratic oversight, and congressional ethics is developed to understand historical data. Such a model allows one to define and test a measure of the fraction of Congress that maximizes material rewards (vs. intrinsic rewards of being in office).
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Paper provided by EconWPA in its series Public Economics with number
9804002.
Length: 24 pages Date of creation: 22 Apr 1998 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:wpa:wuwppe:9804002
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Find related papers by JEL classification: D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Models of Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
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References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Grossman, Gene M & Helpman, Elhanan, 1994.
"Protection for Sale,"
American Economic Review,
American Economic Association, vol. 84(4), pages 833-50, September.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
Gene M. Grossman & Elhanan Helpman, 1992.
"Protection For Sale,"
NBER Working Papers
4149, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)