Apportionment Cycles as Natural Experiments

Roy Elis, Neil Malhotra and Marc Meredith

Political Analysis, 2009, vol. 17, issue 4, 358-376

Abstract: Although there are compelling theoretical reasons to believe that unequal political representation in a legislature leads to an unequal distribution of funds, testing such theories empirically is challenging because it is difficult to separate the effects of representation from the effects of either population levels or changes. We leverage the natural experiment generated by infrequent and discrete census apportionment cycles to estimate the distributional effects of malapportionment in the U.S. House of Representatives. We find that changes in representation cause changes in the distribution of federal outlays to the states. Our method is exportable to any democratic system in which reapportionments are regular, infrequent, and nonstrategic.

Date: 2009
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:polals:v:17:y:2009:i:04:p:358-376_01

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