Votes or Money? Theory and Evidence from the US Congress

Matilde Bombardini and Francesco Trebbi ()

Working Paper Series from Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis

Abstract: This paper investigates the relationship between the size of interest groups in terms of voter representation and the interest group?s campaign contributions to politicians. We uncover a robust hump-shaped relationship between the voting share of an interest group and its contributions to a legislator. This pattern is rationalized in a simultaneous bilateral bargaining model where the larger size of an interest group a¤ects the amount of surplus to be split with the politician (thereby increasing contributions), but is also correlated with the strength of direct voter support the group can o¤er instead of monetary funds (thereby decreasing contributions). The model yields simple structural equations that we estimate at the district level employing data on individual and PAC donations and local employment by sector. This procedure yields structural estimates of electoral uncertainty and politicians e¤ectiveness as perceived by the interest groups. Our approach also implicitly delivers a novel method for estimating the impact of campaign spending on election outcomes: we ?nd that an additional vote costs a politician between 100 and 400 ollars depending on the district.

JEL-codes: D72 P48 H7 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pol
Date: 2007-07, Revised 2007-07
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Working Paper: Votes or Money? Theory and Evidence from the US Congress (2007)
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rim:rimwps:21-07

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