Measuring the Influence of Political Actors on the Federal Budget

Bibliographic Data

ID3292743
AuthorsBen Hammond (0000-0001-7432-6482, Princeton University, corresponding author), Leah Rosenstiel (0000-0003-2286-0557, Princeton University, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume114
Issue2
Pages603-608
Publication date2020-05-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Political Science Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0003-0554 • E-ISSN: 1537-5943
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0003055419000881
OpenAlexW3000945375
LanguageEN
Citations received14
References cited30

When estimating the political determinants of the federal budget, scholars face a choice between using measures of funding and measures of spending as their outcome of interest. We examine the consequences of this choice. In particular, we argue that spending outcomes may serve as a poor test of the research questions scholars seek to answer, since spending data conflate competing budgetary influences, are downstream measures of the appropriations that originated them, and induce measurement error. To test our claim, we compare the spending data used in a recent study (Berry and Fowler 2016: American Journal of Political Science 60 (3): 692-708) with an original data set of military construction appropriations. While an analysis of the spending data produces a null result, the same analysis using the appropriations data provides strong evidence that legislators use their committee positions to distribute pork. Our findings have broad implications for studies that use measures of spending in the congressional and presidency literatures

Economics · Political science · Politics · Presidency · Public economics · Test (biology · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Fiscal Policies and Political Economy · Law · Local Government Finance and Decentralization · Public Administration

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