Friends in High Places

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Cohen, Lauren; Malloy, Christopher J.
• 署名单位: Harvard University
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-ECONOMIC POLICY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7731
• DOI: 10.1257/pol.6.3.63
• 发表日期: 2014
• 页码: 63-91
• 关键词: us house; identification; party; legislators; preferences; ideology; IMPACT; MODEL

摘要

We demonstrate that personal connections amongst US politicians have a significant impact on Senate voting behavior. Networks based on alumni connections between politicians are consistent predictors of voting behavior. We estimate sharp measures that control for common characteristics of the network, as well as heterogeneous impacts of a common network characteristic across votes. We find that the effect of alumni networks is close to 60 percent as large as the effect of state-level considerations. We show that politicians use school ties as a mechanism to engage in vote trading (logrolling), and that alumni networks help facilitate the procurement of discretionary earmarks.