Research

Working Papers

"Corporate Influence through Campaign Contributions: Evidence from the U.S. House" with Lawrence Rothenberg

Abstract: Campaign contributions are commonly claimed to have a minimal or null effect on politicians’ voting behavior, with Ansolabehere et al. (2003) being the most frequent citation. We reexamine their main analysis in two ways. First, using similar regression specifications with recent data, we find a small but statistically significant effect. Second, we implement a new theoretically motivated instrumental variables (IV) design, yielding a much larger estimate. Given our instrument, we identify the effect of business PAC contributions on House members' votes, conditional on those members receiving contributions in ways consistent with the theory of vote buying. Employing recently developed methods for assessing the sensitivity of an IV design to exclusion restriction violations, we find our estimate to be robust. Our findings suggest that business groups strategically contribute to House members to influence their votes and, when they do, the effect can be quite large. 

"Vote Buying and Agenda Control: A Problem for the Study of Money in Politics"

Abstract: Politicians, pundits, and ordinary citizens frequently argue that private money has an outsized influence on U.S. politics. Yet research on the effect of money on politicians' behavior finds limited effects, especially on voting behavior. I construct a formal model to show that these limited effects may be an artifact of the institutional powers of agenda setters in Congress, and the strategic nature of the data generating process. The model predicts that under general conditions, vote buying against proposals can occur with no vote held, and that vote buying is most likely when uncertainty is high, the interest group and agenda setter are extreme, and the voter is moderate. I argue that these conditions held during the 2021 negotiations over the Build Back Better Act. Using a synthetic control design, I test whether the swing voters in the Senate received more campaign contributions than they would have otherwise, finding evidence consistent with the model.

Works in Progress

"Agenda Setting and Vote Buying"

"Burning Money and Lobbying for Policy"

"Competitive Campaign Advertising" with John Duggan