Lobbying Expenditures and Government Output: The NEA and Public Education

Abstract

Primary and secondary education have traditionally been provided by local governments. In recent years, however, higher levels of government have become increasingly involved in the provision of public education. Evidence of this increased involvement includes the greater proportion of funding originating from state or federal sources and the imposition of mandates on local school districts by the state and local governments. These mandates include specifying minimum teacher retirement and other fringe benefits, establishing certain curriculum and textbook requirements, and placing maximum limits on the pupils per teacher. The extent of state government involvement in the provision of elementary and secondary education differs greatly across states. Most studies of state intervention in education have been restricted to examining the effects of intergovernmental grants on local spending.' There has been little positive analysis of why state governments are involved in education or why this involvement varies across states. In this paper, we build upon previous works that consider the role of interest groups in influencing government spending to provide some insights into the role of state governments in public elementary and secondary education and the effects of the state role on local outcomes. Our model focuses on the determination of educational spending when two interest groups, groups of high and low demanders, lobby both state and local governments. We characterize the high demanders of educational expenditures as producers, that is, educators. After developing a model that describes the gains to educators from lobbying at the state level and how the potential gains will differ across states and across localities, we test the model's implications using data on political spending of the state affiliates of the National Education Association (NEA). Using data on salaries aggregated to the state level, we find that NEA political spending increases salaries