Politics and the distribution of federal funds: Evidence from federal legislation in response to COVID-19

Stan Veuger and Jeffrey Clemens
Additional contact information
Stan Veuger: American Enterprise Institute

AEI Economics Working Papers from American Enterprise Institute

Abstract: COVID-19 relief legislation offers a unique setting to study how political representation shapes the distribution of federal assistance to state and local governments. We provide evidence of a substantial small-state bias: an additional Senator or Representative per million residents predicts an additional $670 dollars in aid per capita across the four relief packages. Alignment with the Democratic party predicts increases in states’ allocations through legislation designed after the January 2021 political transition. This benefit of partisan alignment operates through the American Rescue Plan Act’s sheer size, as well as the formulas through which it distributed transportation and general relief funds.

Keywords: Coronavirus; Political Economy; Political System; State And Local Budgets; State Government; Stimulus (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-05
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Cle ... federal-funds-WP.pdf

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:aei:rpaper:1008602718

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in AEI Economics Working Papers from American Enterprise Institute Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Dave Adams, CIO ().