Legislative Representation, Bargaining Power, and the Distribution of Federal Funds: Evidence from the U.S. Senate

Brian Knight

No 10385, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: While representation in the U.S. House is based upon state population, each state has an equal number (two) of U.S. Senators. Thus, relative to the state delegations in the U.S. House, small population states are provided disproportionate bargaining power in the U.S. Senate. This paper provides new evidence on the role of this small state bargaining power in the distribution of federal funds using data on projects earmarked in appropriations bills between 1995 and 2003. Relative to earmarks secured in House appropriations bills, Senate earmarks exhibit a small state advantage that is both economically and statistically significant. The paper also examines two theoretically-motivated channels through which this small state advantage operates: increased proposal power through appropriations committee representation and the lower cost of securing votes due to smaller federal tax shares. Taken together, these two channels explain over 80 percent of the measured small state bias. Finally, a welfare analysis demonstrates the inefficiency of hte measured small state bias.

JEL-codes: D7 H7 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mic and nep-pol
Note: PE
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (26)

Published as Knight, Brian. "Legislative Representation, Bargaining Power, and the Distribution of Federal Funds: Evidence from the U.S. Senate." Economic Journal 118, 532 (October 2008): 1785-1803.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w10385.pdf (application/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:nbr:nberwo:10385

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w10385

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().