Friends in High Places

Lauren Cohen and Christopher Malloy ()

No 16437, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We demonstrate that personal connections amongst politicians have a significant impact on the voting behavior of U.S. politicians. Networks based on alumni connections between politicians, as well as common seat locations on the chamber floor, are consistent predictors of voting behavior. For the former, we estimate sharp measures that control for common characteristics of the network, as well as heterogeneous impacts of a common network characteristic across votes. For common seat locations, we identify a set of plausibly exogenously assigned seats (Freshman Senators), and find a strong impact of seat location networks on voting. We find that the effect of alumni networks is close to 60% of the size of the effect of state-level considerations. The network effects we identify are stronger for more tightly linked networks, and at times when votes are most valuable.

JEL-codes: D85 G18 G3 G38 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-10
Note: AP CF POL
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Published as Cohen, Lauren, and Christopher J. Malloy. 2014. "Friends in High Places." American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 6(3): 63-91.

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