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Towards the Greater Good? EU Commissioners' Nationality and Budget Allocation in the European Union

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  • Kai Gehring
  • Stephan A. Schneider

Abstract

We demonstrate that the nationalities of EU Commissioners influence budget allocation decisions in favor of their country of origin. Our focus is on the Commissioners for Agriculture, who are exclusively responsible for a specific fund that accounts for the largest share of the overall EU budget. On average, providing the Commissioner causes a 1 percentage point increase in a country's share of the overall EU budget, which corresponds to 850 million euros per year. There are no different pretreatment trends and the magnitude of the bias from selection-on-unobservables would have to be implausibly high to account for the estimated coefficient.

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  • Kai Gehring & Stephan A. Schneider, 2018. "Towards the Greater Good? EU Commissioners' Nationality and Budget Allocation in the European Union," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 10(1), pages 214-239, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aejpol:v:10:y:2018:i:1:p:214-39
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/pol.20160038
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    5. Juan I Block & Rohan Dutta & David K Levine, 2021. "Leaders and Social Norms: On the Emergence of Consensus or Conflict," Levine's Working Paper Archive 786969000000001758, David K. Levine.
    6. Stephan Schneider & Sven Kunze, 2021. "Disastrous Discretion: Ambiguous Decision Situations Foster Political Favoritism," KOF Working papers 21-491, KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich.
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    9. Dicharry, Benoit & Nguyen-Van, Phu & Pham, Thi Kim Cuong, 2019. "“The winner takes it all” or a story of the optimal allocation of the European Cohesion Fund," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 385-399.
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    11. Bommer, Christian & Dreher, Axel & Perez-Alvarez, Marcello, 2022. "Home bias in humanitarian aid: The role of regional favoritism in the allocation of international disaster relief," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 208(C).
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    13. Felipe Carozzi & Davide Cipullo & Luca Repetto, 2019. "Divided They Fall. Fragmented Parliaments and Government Stability," Working Papers wp2019_1911, CEMFI.
    14. Gerrit J. Gonschorek, 2020. "Subnational Favoritism in Development Grant Allocations – Empirical Evidence from Decentralized Indonesia," Discussion Paper Series 38, Department of International Economic Policy, University of Freiburg, revised Feb 2020.
    15. Leoné Walters & Manoel Bittencourt & Carolyn Chisadza, 2023. "Public infrastructure provision and ethnic favouritism: Evidence from South Africa," Economics of Transition and Institutional Change, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 31(1), pages 33-65, January.
    16. Harry Pickard, 2021. "The Impact of Career Politicians: Evidence from US Governors," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 74(1), pages 103-125, February.
    17. Adam Pilny & Felix Roesel, 2020. "Are Doctors Better Health Ministers?," American Journal of Health Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 6(4), pages 498-532.
    18. Harry Pickard, 2018. "Does Congressional experience in US governors influence state transfers?," Working Papers 2018014, The University of Sheffield, Department of Economics.
    19. Andreas Dür & Christoph Moser & Gabriele Spilker, 2020. "The political economy of the European Union," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 15(3), pages 561-572, July.
    20. Guglielmo Barone & Guido de Blasio & Elena Gentili, 2020. "Politically connected cities: Italy 1951-1991," Working Papers wp1158, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    21. Carozzi, Felipe & Cipullo, Davide & Repetto, Luca, 2024. "Powers that be? Political alignment, government formation, and government stability," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 230(C).
    22. Deng, Lanfang & Tong, Tingting, 2020. "Parenting style and the development of noncognitive ability in children," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    23. Kai Gehring, 2022. "Can External Threats Foster a European Union Identity? Evidence from Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 132(644), pages 1489-1516.
    24. Brice Fabre & Marc Sangnier, 2022. "Where do politicians send pork? Evidence from central government transfers to French municipalities," DeFiPP Working Papers 2202, University of Namur, Development Finance and Public Policies.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • F55 - International Economics - - International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy - - - International Institutional Arrangements
    • H61 - Public Economics - - National Budget, Deficit, and Debt - - - Budget; Budget Systems
    • H77 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - Intergovernmental Relations; Federalism

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    1. Towards the Greater Good? EU Commissioners' Nationality and Budget Allocation in the European Union (American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 2018) in ReplicationWiki

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