This paper reevaluates Jacobson's well-known finding (1978, 1980, 1984, 1985) that campaign spending by House incumbents has little influence on the vote. Analysis of the 1978 House election shows that three forms of model misspecification cause Jacobson to underestimate the effect of incumbent expenditures: failure to control for the quality of the challenger, inattentiveness to interaction effects, and inadequate treatment of reciprocal causation. When these biases are corrected, the marginal effect of incumbent spending is found to be substantial and, under certain circumstances, on par with the effect of challenger spending. In addition, challenger quality is shown to be an important determinant of the vote, particularly when the challenger spends heavily on his or her campaign. These findings imply that revisions to Jacobson's policy recommendations are necessary if House races are to be made more competitive.

Salvation for the Spendthrift Incumbent: Reestimating the Effects of Campaign Spending in House Elections

The foundations of welfare economics

While it is widely believed by academics, politicians, and the popular press that incumbent congressmen are rewarded by the electorate for bringing federal dollars to their district, the empirical evidence supporting that claim is extremely weak. One explanation for the failure to uncover the expected relationship between federal spending and election outcomes is that incumbents who expect to have difficulty being reelected are likely to exert greater effort in obtaining federal outlays. Since it is generally impossible to adequately measure this effort, the estimated impact of spending is biased downward due to an omitted variable bias. We address this estimation problem using instrumental variables. For each House district, we use spending outside the district but inside the state containing the district, as an instrument for spending in the district. Federal spending is affected by a large number of actors (e.g. governors, senators, mayors, and other House members in the state delegation), leading to positive correlations in federal spending across the House districts within states. However, federal spending outside of a district is unlikely to be strongly correlated with the strength of that district's electoral challenge. Thus, spending in other districts is a plausible instrument. In contrast to previous studies, we find strong evidence that non-transfer federal spending benefits congressional incumbents: an additional $100 per capita in such spending is worth as much as two percent of the popular vote. Additional transfer spending, on the other hand, does not appear to have any electoral effects.

The Impact of Federal Spending on House Election Outcomes

It is an enduring belief in American politics that legislators who "bring home the bacon" are rewarded for their efforts at the ballot box. Most researchers, however, have been unsuccessful in corroborating empirically a relationship between allocations to member districts and reelection margins. Previous research may have failed to detect a relationship due to misconceptualization, misspecified empirical tests, or both. We argue that not all legislators have the same incentives to utilize pork-barrel strategies to enhance their electoral margins. Furthermore the extent to which voters are influenced by the provision of distributive benefits is likely to depend on the attentiveness of voters to politics, their interest group affiliations, and their sources of political information. In short, both the predisposition to engage in pork-barrel strategies and their effects are likely to be conditional. Hypotheses derived from this respecification of the electoral connection thesis are tested with a data base t...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/2132144

Congressional Elections and the Pork Barrel

The 1986 and 1988 U.S. House elections set all-time records for reelection of incumbents. This paper proposes and tests a comprehensive model of House election outcomes and uses this model to explain competition for House seats. The results indicate that the extraordinarily low level of competition in recent House elections is directly attributable to two trends which affected these elections during the 1980s: the increasing cost of House campaigns and the declining ability of House challengers to raise campaign funds. After controlling for inflation, a dollar of campaign spending in 1984 or 1986 yielded a much lower rate of electoral return for House challengers than a dollar of campaign spending in 1974 or 1976. In addition, between 1980 and 1988, average spending by House challengers declined by more than 30% in real dollars. Public financing of campaigns could increase competition for House seats, but only if a very high level of funding was provided.

Incumbency, Campaign Spending, and the Decline of Competition in U.S. House Elections

It is often assumed that changes in federal spending in a congressional district affect the incumbent's prospect of reelection. This study tests that assumption, using cross-section data to analyze voting for candidates for election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1976, 1978, and 1980. While variables reflecting party affiliation, the incumbent's vote in the last election, and scandal associated with incumbents are important determinants of the vote, changes in both local federal spending on construction and federal civilian employment in the incumbent's district are shown to have no effect on the share of the vote going to incumbents. They also have no effect on campaign expenditures by either challengers or incumbents.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2110791.pdf

Congressional Elections and Local Federal

: In this paper, we report on an investigation of the political value of federal spending in congressional elections. The basic hypothesis can be stated simply: An incumbent congressman's reelection prospects are positively related to changes in federal spending in his district. To test this hypothesis, we focus on two relationships: the dependence of the incumbent's vote on changes in local federal spending, expressed in percentage terms, and the dependence of campaign expenditures (for the incumbent and the challenger) or changes in local federal spending, expressed in percentage terms. These relations are examined on the basis of data from individual districts for each of three elections: 1980, 1978, and 1976.

Congressional Elections and Local Federal Spending

To evaluate government programs, it is necessary to say what individuals are "entitled" to in regard to wealth distribution. This paper explores the normative implications for government action of the presumption that factors are"entitled" to their marginal product. The conclusions are that imperfections in knowledge, mobility, and competition should be removed by court action as a matter of distributive justice, and that collective goods, including income redistribution, should be paid for by those who demand the goods. Compensation is appropriate when government changes the rules it has itself imposed or when it recognizes new property rights where they did not formerly exist.

Efficiency, Distribution, and the Role of Government in a Market Economy

: In 1970, about 500 occupations were licensed by one or more states in the U.S. and over 2000 were regulated at the local level. The fact that licensing is so widespread suggests that it must provide some benefits to the public, perhaps by eliminating from the market some low quality services that most consumers feel they would only have bought by mistake. It may also result in higher prices, however, without improving the quality of services available.

Paul Feldman

Papers

Congressional Elections and Local Federal

Congressional Elections and Local Federal Spending

Efficiency, Distribution, and the Role of Government in a Market Economy

Does licensing improve the quality of service: the case of dentists