TY  - JOUR
AU  - Levitt,Steven D.
AU  - Poterba,James M.
TI  - Congressional Distributive Politics and State Economic Performance
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 4721
PY  - 1994
Y2  - April 1994
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w4721
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w4721.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Steven D. Levitt
Department of Economics
University of Chicago
1126 East 59th Street
Chicago, IL  60637
Tel: 773/834-1862
Fax: 773/702-8490
E-Mail: slevitt@midway.uchicago.edu

James M. Poterba
Department of Economics
MIT, E52-350
50 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA  02142-1347
Tel: 617/253-6673
Fax: 617/258-7804
E-Mail: poterba@nber.org
AB  - This paper tests several theories of the effects of congressional representation on state economic growth.  States that were represented by very senior Democratic congressmen grew more quickly during the 1953-1990 period than states that were represented by more junior congressional delegations.  We find some, but weaker, evidence that states with a high fraction of their delegation on particularly influential committees also exhibit above-average growth.  We also test partisan models of distributive politics by studying the relationship between a state's degree of political competition and its growth rate.  Our findings support both nonpartisan and partisan models of congressional distributive politics.  In spite of our findings with respect to economic growth, we can not detect any substantively important association between congressional delegation seniority, the degree of state political competition, and the geographic distribution of federal funds.  The source of the growth relationships we identify therefore remains an open question.
ER  -