Are Contributions Rational? Untangling Strategies of Political Action Committees

Thomas Stratmann

Journal of Political Economy, 1992, vol. 100, issue 3, 647-64

Abstract: Empirical public choice literature and casual observation suggest that the behavior of political action committees is remarkably unsophisticated, meaning that political action committees give to those legislators who would support their interests anyway. Thus, it is suggested that contributor behavior deviates from rational behavior, which is a cornerstone of economic analysis. In this paper, a switching regression model is estimated that allows for strategies of political action committees to vary for different contribution recipients. The author analyzes the behavior of farm political action committees over three election cycles. In contrast to previous findings, he finds that contributor behavior is not inconsistent with rational behavior. Copyright 1992 by University of Chicago Press.

Date: 1992
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (78)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/261833 full text (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. See http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JPE for details.

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:ucp:jpolec:v:100:y:1992:i:3:p:647-64

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Political Economy from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().