Do Politicians Reward Core Supporters? Evidence from a Discretionary Grant Program

Kauder, Björn; Potrafke, Niklas; Reischmann, Markus

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2866857

Cited by 3 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…See Stratmann and Baur (2002) and Maaser and Stratmann (2016) for Germany, Psycharis et al (2019) for Greece, Carozzi and Repetto (2016) for Italy, Knight (2002Knight ( , 2004 and Berry and Fowler (2016) for the US. 2 Studies exploring whether the location of core/swing voters impacts the distribution of grants: For France and Italy, see Dellmuth et al (2017), Kauder et al (2016) for Germany, Castells and Solé-Ollé (2005) for Spain and Ansolabehere and Snyder (2006) for the USA.…”

Section: Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

“…This also applies to the financing of research and development projects, provided that such projects bind highly qualified workers to the respective locations and have local multiplier effects. Questions frequently addressed in the literature are whether the location of core constituencies and swing voters or vote margins influence the distribution of transfers (see Dellmuth, Schraff, & Stoffel, 2017;Kauder, Potrafke, & Reischmann, 2016;Larcinese, Snyder, & Testa, 2013). In the same way, central governments might use transfers to support aligned subnational governments (see Brollo & Nannicini, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Political alignment and project funding

Schneider

Wech

Wrede

2022

Int Tax Public Finance

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We analyze the relationship between the party affiliation of politicians at different levels of government and the spatial distribution of funding for research, development and innovation projects. In particular, we are investigating whether more federal grants are being granted in Germany for projects in federal states whose government is led by the same political party as the responsible ministry at federal level. Our dataset contains detailed information on publicly funded projects in Germany in the period 2010–2019. Using a fixed-effects estimation approach, we find a link between grant allocation and party affiliation of funding for research, development and innovation projects, in particular smaller ones. For these projects, political alignment is associated with an average increase in public funding by almost 10,000 euro. Our results suggest that public funds for research, development and innovation projects could be used more efficiently than they are.

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Section: Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Political alignment and project funding

Schneider

Wech

Wrede

2022

Int Tax Public Finance

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“…The idea that presidents alter the allocation of federal funding to further political interests is now well accepted in the literature surrounding U.S. politics. 1 Although early work suggested that congressional particularism (where legislators aim to get their own constituents funding) is balanced by presidential universalism, researchers have shown both theoretically (Fleck 1999; McCarty 2000) and empirically (Larcinese, Rizzo and Testa 2006; Bertelli and Grose 2009; Berry, Burden and Howel 2010; Kriner and Reeves 2012; Albouy 2013; Kriner and Reeves 2015a; Kriner and Reeves 2015b; Stratmann and Wojnilower 2015; Kauder, Potrafke and Reischmann 2016) that presidential particularism can also lead to funds being allocated to constituencies that are politically important to the administration in power. It is unclear, however, how this manipulation affects the economic well-being of politically targeted areas.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“… 2. Core targeting has also been shown to be relevant in other countries, such as Germany (Kauder, Potrafke and Reischmann 2016). …”

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confidence: 99%

The Effect of Presidential Particularism on Economic Well-Being: A County-Level Analysis

Pavlik

Tackett

2022

Public Finance Review

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Does it pay to be a locale of political importance? Political business cycle theory predicts that the executive has an incentive to manipulate policy to increase the chances of their party remaining in office. In particular, core counties (those that vote for the current administration) have been shown to enjoy disproportionately higher federal spending. In this paper, we explore how this funding affects the well-being of an area by estimating the effect of presidential particularism on governmental transfers and (productive) income per-capita using county-level data from 1993 to 2012. We find that transfer payments tend to be higher and income lower in counties that vote for the current administration. These findings are robust across a wide number of specifications including fixed effects, first differences, a first differenced model with county-specific time trends, and a matching analysis. Moreover, results hold when examining the subset of counties that only voted for a single party throughout the entire sample where the treatment (whether the county voted for the current administration) is largely exogenous to the county in question.

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“…A large number of empirical studies that followed, undertaken mostly within single countries, provide also con icting ndings concerning the behavior of politicians. The vast majority of these studies typically relate regional targeting of public infrastructure spending with the vote share of the most recent election providing support both for the 'swing voter' (see, e.g., Castells and Solé-Ollé, 2005; Solé-Ollé, 2013; Azar, 2022), and the 'core voter' (see, e.g., Cadot et al, 2006; Luca and Rodríguez-Pose, 2015; Kauder et al 2016) hypotheses. [1] The paper at hand employs a unique dataset to explore potential political incentives behind the regional distribution of public investment spending in Greece from 1975 to 1989.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Investing in the roots of your political ancestors

Kammas

Poulima

Sarantides

2022

Preprint

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Using regional data for Greece, we document the disproportionate allocation of public investment funds in favor of prefectures with many core supporters of the incumbent party. Our main evidence comes from an Instrumental Variables (IV) analysis that exploits the discontinuity in the political landscape of Greece after a brief military junta (1967-1974) to link the parties established after 1974 with their ancestors from the same ‘political family’ during the pre-dictatorial era. In particular, we show that political ancestors’ electoral strength affects the allocation of public investment, the political support between political ancestor and descendant parties is strongly associated and that both push the allocation of public investment in prefectures with many core supporters. We also provide evidence that the appointment of deputy ministers from the loyal prefectures of the incumbent party plays an important role in this relationship. JEL classification: H1; H4; D7

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Do Politicians Reward Core Supporters? Evidence from a Discretionary Grant Program

Cited by 3 publications

References 47 publications

Political alignment and project funding

Political alignment and project funding

The Effect of Presidential Particularism on Economic Well-Being: A County-Level Analysis

Investing in the roots of your political ancestors

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