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Congressional Committees and the Political Economy of Federal Outlays

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  • Alvarez, Michael R.
  • Saving, Jason

Abstract

The literature on the organization of the U.S. Congress has been dominated by 'distributive' and 'informational' theory. One important source of disagreement between these two theories is their characterization of whether individual legislators can engage in pork-barrel activities. Here the authors provide evidence which indicates that the pork barrel is alive and well in the contemporary U.S. Congress. They focus on whether members of power and constituency committees can direct disproportionate federal expenditures to their districts. Finding strong and systematic evidence of pork-barrel activities by committee members provides empirical support for distributive theories of legislative organization. Copyright 1997 by Kluwer Academic Publishers
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Suggested Citation

  • Alvarez, Michael R. & Saving, Jason, 1995. "Congressional Committees and the Political Economy of Federal Outlays," Working Papers 898, California Institute of Technology, Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences.
    • Handle: RePEc:clt:sswopa:898
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    Cited by:

    1. Deepak Hegde, 2009. "Political Influence behind the Veil of Peer Review: An Analysis of Public Biomedical Research Funding in the United States," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 52(4), pages 665-690, November.
    2. Brian Knight, 2000. "The flypaper effect unstuck: evidence on endogenous grants from the Federal Highway Aid Program," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2000-49, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    3. Andrew Leigh, 2008. "Bringing home the bacon: an empirical analysis of the extent and effects of pork-barreling in Australian politics," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 137(1), pages 279-299, October.
    4. Boyle, Melissa A. & Matheson, Victor A., 2009. "Determinants of the distribution of congressional earmarks across states," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 104(2), pages 63-65, August.
    5. Franklin G. Mixon & Amanda C. Pagels, 2007. "Are Congressional Black Caucus Members More Reliable? Loyalty Screening and Committee Assignments of Newly Elected Legislators," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 66(2), pages 413-431, April.
    6. Hyun‐A Kim & Dongwon Lee & Sangwon Park, 2020. "Budget Committee And Intergovernmental Transfer: Evidence From South Korea," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 58(4), pages 1894-1906, October.
    7. Cortney S. Rodet, 2014. "Voter Behavior, Term Limits, and Seniority Advantage in Pork-Barrel Politics," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 170(4), pages 646-683, December.
    8. Reingewertz, Yaniv, 2014. "Fiscal Decentralization - a Survey of the Empirical Literature," MPRA Paper 59889, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Yaniv Reingewertz & Thushyanthan Baskaran, 2020. "Distributive spending and presidential partisan politics," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 185(1), pages 65-85, October.
    10. Valentino Larcinese & Leonzio Rizzo & Cecilia Testa, 2005. "Allocating the US Federal Budget to the States: the Impact of the President," STICERD - Political Economy and Public Policy Paper Series 03, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE.
    11. Joseph McGarrity, 2005. "Macroeconomic conditions and committee re-election rates," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 124(3), pages 453-480, September.
    12. Batzilis, Dimitris, 2020. "The political determinants of government spending allocation and growth," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(3), pages 213-220.
    13. Joshua Hall & Amanda Ross & Christopher Yencha, 2015. "The political economy of the Essential Air Service program," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 165(1), pages 147-164, October.
    14. Simon Wiederhold, 2012. "The Role of Public Procurement in Innovation: Theory and Empirical Evidence," ifo Beiträge zur Wirtschaftsforschung, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, number 43.
    15. Christopher Duquette & Franklin Mixon & Richard Cebula, 2013. "The Impact of Legislative Tenure and Seniority on General Election Success: Econometric Evidence from U.S. House Races," Atlantic Economic Journal, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 41(2), pages 161-172, June.
    16. Brian Knight, 2002. "Endogenous Federal Grants and Crowd-out of State Government Spending: Theory and Evidence from the Federal Highway Aid Program," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(1), pages 71-92, March.
    17. DeBacker, Jason, 2011. "The price of pork: The seniority trap in the U.S. House," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(1-2), pages 63-78, February.
    18. José Bercoff & Osvaldo Meloni, 2009. "Federal budget allocation in an emergent democracy: evidence from Argentina," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 10(1), pages 65-83, January.
    19. Viktor Slavtchev & Simon Wiederhold, 2011. "The Impact of Government Procurement Composition on Private R&D Activities," Jena Economics Research Papers 2011-036, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.
    20. Alizadeh, Tooran & Farid, Reza, 2017. "Political economy of telecommunication infrastructure: An investigation of the National Broadband Network early rollout and pork barrel politics in Australia," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 41(4), pages 242-252.
    21. Jeffrey Lazarus, 2010. "Giving the People What They Want? The Distribution of Earmarks in the U.S. House of Representatives," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 54(2), pages 338-353, April.
    22. Fowler, Anthony & Hall, Andrew B., 2015. "Congressional seniority and pork: A pig fat myth?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 40(PA), pages 42-56.
    23. Royce Carroll & Henry A. Kim, 2010. "Party Government and the “Cohesive Power of Public Plunder”," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 54(1), pages 34-44, January.

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