Political Dynasties
Ernesto Dal Bó,
Pedro Dal Bó and
Jason Snyder
No 13122, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc
Abstract:
We study political dynasties in the United States Congress since its inception in 1789. We document historic and geographic patterns in the evolution and profile of political dynasties, study the extent of dynastic bias in legislative politics versus other occupations, and analyze the connection between political dynasties and political competition. We also study the self-perpetuation of political elites. We find that legislators who enjoy longer tenures are significantly more likely to have relatives entering Congress later. Using instrumental variables methods, we establish that this relationship is causal: a longer period in power increases the chance that a person may start (or continue) a political dynasty. Therefore, dynastic political power is self-perpetuating in that a positive exogenous shock to a person's political power has persistent effects through posterior dynastic attainment. In politics, power begets power.
JEL-codes: D70 J45 N41 N42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-his
Note: POL DAE
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)
Published as ERNESTO DAL BÓ & PEDRO DAL BÓ & JASON SNYDER, 2009. "Political Dynasties," Review of Economic Studies, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 76(1), pages 115-142, 01.
Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w13122.pdf (application/pdf)
Related works:
Journal Article: Political Dynasties (2009)
Working Paper: Political Dynasties (2006)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:13122
Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w13122
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by (wpc@nber.org).