Legend of the Pork Barrel? The Causal Effect of Legislature Size on Public Spending

Carolin Holzmann and Orlando Zaddach

FinanzArchiv: Public Finance Analysis, 2019, vol. 75, issue 1, 39-58

Abstract: This paper investigates pork-barrel spending, the inefficient effect of legislature size on public spending, in at-large electoral systems. Using a rich panel-data set on German municipalities whose councils are elected at large, we employ a regression discontinuity design to estimate the causal effect of legislature size of public spending. The empirical results indicate that the pork-barrel effect in at-large electoral systems is of very small economic magnitude. This finding is in line with the theoretical prediction of a zero effect, but is in sharp contrast to previously published estimates in the literature that commonly support a positive pork-barrel spending effect.

Keywords: legislature size; public spending; pork-barrel spending; 1=n rule (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H11 H41 H72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mohrsiebeck.com/en/article/legend-of-t ... g-101628fa-2018-0024
Fulltext access is included for subscribers to the printed version.

Related works:
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:mhr:finarc:urn:doi:10.1628/fa-2018-0024

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
Mohr Siebeck GmbH & Co. KG, P.O.Box 2040, 72010 Tübingen, Germany

DOI: 10.1628/fa-2018-0024

Access Statistics for this article

FinanzArchiv: Public Finance Analysis is currently edited by Alfons Weichenrieder, Ronnie Schöb and Jean-François Tremblay

More articles in FinanzArchiv: Public Finance Analysis from Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Thomas Wolpert ().