Partisan Determinants of Federal Highway Grants

Frank Goetzke, William Hankins and Gary Hoover

No 6603, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: Using data on federal highway grants from the Department of Transportation’s Federal High- way Administration, this paper investigates several questions regarding the political economy of highway funding. We investigate the period 1994 - 2008 and examine whether political align- ment and political ideology play a role in determining how much highway funding per capita a state receives. We find evidence that Republican-dominated House of Representatives del-egations receive more highway funding per capita compared to Democrats, especially in rural states. We also find that senators in the party of the president are able to secure more highway funding per capita. Overall, the distribution of highway spending over this time period appears to have been determined by political rather than deterministic considerations and in a way that is consistent with how the Interstate Highway System has distributed Republican voters to rural areas.

Keywords: federal highway administration grants; political alignment; political ideology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 H77 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-pol and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Partisan Determinants of Federal Highway Grants (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6603

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