Where and why do politicians send pork? Evidence from central government transfers to French municipalities

This paper uses French data to simultaneously estimate the impact of two types of connections on government subsidies allocated to municipalities. Investigating different types of connection in a same setting helps to distinguish between the different motivations that could drive pork-barreling. We differentiate between municipalities where ministers held office before their appointment to the government and those where they lived as children. Exploiting ministers' entries into and exits from the government, we show that municipalities where a minister was mayor receive 30% more investment subsidies when the politician they are linked to joins the government, and a similar size decrease when the minister departs. We show that these effects are driven by ministers who will participate in local elections after their time in the central government. In contrast, we do not observe these outcomes for municipalities where ministers lived as children. These findings indicate that altruism towards childhood friends and family does not fuel pork-barreling and suggest that future electoral prospects account for at least one quarter of reported pork-barreling. The remaining share can indistinctly be attributed to sentimental attachment or political favouritism at large.