Does Bill Co-sponsorship Affect Campaign Contributions?: Evidence from the U.S. House of Representatives, 2000-2008

Shaun Tanger (), Richard Seals () and David Laband ()

No auwp2011-09, Auburn Economics Working Paper Series from Department of Economics, Auburn University

Abstract: There is considerable variation across members of the United States House of Representatives with respect to the number of bills they co-sponsor each legislative cycle. But we have little understanding of what motivates bill co-sponsorship activity. It seems unlikely that prospective campaign contributors to a specific legislator reward his/her bill co-sponsorship activity per se, as it merely contributes to the productivity of some other member(s) of the legislature. We develop a two-stage least squares (2SLS) model to examine the impact of the number of bills co-sponsored by members of the U.S. House of Representatives on campaign contributions received by those individuals over the time period 2000-2008. Bill co-sponsorship has a large and positive effect on campaign contributions through bill sponsorship.

Keywords: bill cosponsorship; sponsorship; campaign contributions; coalition building; reputational capitol (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H10 H11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec and nep-cdm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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