TY  - JOUR
AU  - Knight,Brian
TI  - Bargaining in Legislatures: An Empirical Investigation
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 10530
PY  - 2004
Y2  - May 2004
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10530
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10530.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Brian G. Knight
Brown University
Department of Economics, Box B
64 Waterman Street
Providence, RI 02912
Tel: 401/863-1584
Fax: 401/863-1970
E-Mail: Brian_Knight@brown.edu
AB  - While the theoretical literature on non-cooperative legislative bargaining has grown voluminous, there is little empirical work attempting to test a key prediction in this literature: proposal power is valuable. This paper aims to fill this gap in the literature by investigating the role of proposal power in the allocation of transportation projects across U.S. Congressional districts in 1991 and 1998. The evidence supports the key qualitative prediction of the Baron and Ferejohn legislative bargaining model: members with proposal power, those sitting on the transportation authorization committee, secure more project spending for their districts than do other representatives. Support for the quantitative restrictions on the value of proposal power, which are more powerful than the qualitative restrictions, is more mixed. I then empirically address several alternative models of legislative behavior, including partisian models, informational roles for committees, models with appropriations committees, and theories of committees as preference outliers.
ER  -