Vote Buying in the U.S. Congress

Ulrich Matter (), Paolo Roberti () and Michaela Slotwinski

No 1912, Economics Working Paper Series from University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science

Abstract: We assess the influence of moneyed interests on legislative decisions. Our theory predicts that the vote outcome distribution and donation flows in a legislature feature a discontinuity at the approval threshold of bills if special interest groups are involved in vote buying. Testing the theoretical predictions based on two decades of roll-call voting in the U.S. House, we identify the link between narrowly passed bills and well-timed campaign contributions. Several pieces of evidence substantiate our main finding, suggesting that moneyed interests exert remarkably effective control over the passage of contested bills.

Keywords: Legislative voting; campaign finance; special interest groups; lobbying; forensic economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D78 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22 pages
Date: 2019-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://ux-tauri.unisg.ch/RePEc/usg/econwp/EWP-1912.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Vote Buying in the US Congress (2019)
Working Paper: Vote buying in the US Congress (2019)
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:usg:econwp:2019:12

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economics Working Paper Series from University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().