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More federal legislators lead to more resources for their constituencies: Evidence from exogenous differences in seat allocations

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  • Frank, Marco
  • Stadelmann, David

Abstract

Electoral district magnitude varies across German electoral constituencies and over legislative periods due to Germany's electoral system. The number of seats in parliament per constituency is effectively random. This setting permits us to investigate institutionally driven variations in the magnitude of individual constituencies on the allocation of federal resources to these constituencies. We analyze the causal effect of having more than one federal legislator per constituency on federal government resources by exploiting information from 1,379 constituencies from 1998 to 2017. More federal legislators per constituency lead to statistically significantly more employment of federal civil servants. The size of the effect is large and corresponds to about 3.5% of average employment once a constituency is represented by additional legislators from party lists. Robustness tests support our results. Further evidence points to heterogeneity of the effect: Constituencies represented by additional legislators who are experienced and who are members of larger, competing parties obtain more federal resources.

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  • Frank, Marco & Stadelmann, David, 2021. "More federal legislators lead to more resources for their constituencies: Evidence from exogenous differences in seat allocations," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 230-243.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jcecon:v:49:y:2021:i:1:p:230-243
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jce.2020.07.008
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    Cited by:

    1. Marco Frank & David Stadelmann, 2021. "Political competition and legislative shirking in roll-call votes: Evidence from Germany for 1953–2017," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 189(3), pages 555-575, December.
    2. Portmann, Marco & Stadelmann, David & Eichenberger, Reiner, 2022. "Incentives dominate selection – Chamber-changing legislators are driven by electoral rules and voter preferences," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 193(C), pages 353-366.
    3. Frank, Marco & Stadelmann, David, 2022. "Competition, Benchmarking, and Electoral Success: Evidence from 65 years of the German Bundestag," VfS Annual Conference 2022 (Basel): Big Data in Economics 264070, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    4. Frank, Marco & Stadelmann, David, 2023. "Competition, benchmarking, and electoral success: Evidence from 69 years of the German Bundestag," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    District magnitude; Representation; Fiscal commons; Redistribution;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • F50 - International Economics - - International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy - - - General
    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods

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