Strategic delegation in a legislative bargaining model with pork and public goods

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Christiansen, Nels
• 署名单位: Trinity University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2012.10.001
• 发表日期: 2013
• 页码: 217-229
• 关键词: Strategic delegation; Legislative bargaining; Collective decisions; public goods; pork

摘要

This paper examines the incentives of voters to appoint legislators with different preferences from their own. The paper adopts an underlying legislative bargaining model proposed by Volden and Wiseman (2007) in which legislators with heterogeneous preferences divide a fixed budget between a public good and pork projects (local public goods). We show that voters have an incentive to strategically delegate to affect how the budget is divided at the legislative level. When voters' preferences for pork are not too strong, the incentives for strategic delegation exist to appoint representatives who will direct more money to the public good and not to pork projects. This generally results in at least as many representatives as districts that favor the public good. The comparative statics predict that when strategic delegation occurs, increasing the size of the legislature increases the fraction of the budget spent on the public good. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.