Legislative redistricting and the partisan distribution of transportation expenditure

Walter Melnik ()
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Walter Melnik: Marquette University

Economics of Governance, 2024, vol. 25, issue 1, No 1, 29 pages

Abstract: Abstract I show that a state representative’s political party determines transportation expenditure in the area she represents. Previous studies of this topic consider party changes through election outcomes, which may be correlated with unobservable determinants of expenditure. To overcome this issue, I identify my estimates using Ohio’s 2012 state legislative redistricting, which moved many geographic areas into districts with opposite party incumbents. The Republican party controlled the state legislature and governorship over the period I study. I find that areas moving from governing party Republican to minority party Democratic districts received $3.4M (0.18 standard deviations) less annual highway construction funding than areas remaining in Republican districts. Areas moving from a Democratic to a Republican district, on the other hand, experienced no increase in expenditure—the negative effect of moving to a different representative’s district appears to outweigh the positive effect of a majority party representative. Descriptive evidence suggests that changing representative’s party through redistricting had a different effect on construction funding than changing through an election, underlining the importance of my identification strategy.

Keywords: Legislature; Partisanship; Patronage; Redistricting; State expenditure; Transportation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D78 H7 R42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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DOI: 10.1007/s10101-024-00308-w

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