Suchergebnisse

AbstractWe investigate the political factors involved in the allocation of public investments into Turkish electoral districts. Using a unique data set covering detailed individual characteristics of approximately 2000 Turkish MPs over five legislative periods during 1987–2004, we show that the composition of several legislator characteristics in an electorate, such as the level of education, area of tertiary degree, and former profession, matters in the way pork barrel occurs across electorates. The findings also indicate a strong presence of partisan motivations and targeted support for opposition groups and ideological strongholds in public investment allocations. We also document evidence that a stronger right‐wing tendency in the cabinet, a single‐party government, fractionalized voter preferences, and higher voter turnout in the electorate are all associated with increased public investments into specific geographic constituencies.

Abstract.  In the Grossman and Helpman (1994) model of endogenous trade protection, sectoral lobbies try to influence an incumbent government that maximizes a weighted sum of political contributions and aggregate welfare. We empirically investigate this model using U.S. and Turkish data. Our specification is more tightly tied to theory than those in existing studies. Additionally, we assume all specific‐factor owners to be organized into different lobbies. These changes, validated by hypothesis tests, yield more realistic parameter estimates of the government's concern for aggregate welfare and of the fraction of population organized into lobbies.