Abstract

Vote trading among lawmakers (logrolling) can enable political rent-seeking but is difficult to identify. To achieve identification, we explore the rules governing voting for railway projects in the U.K. Parliament during the Railway Mania of the 1840s. Parliamentary rules barred MPs from voting directly for their interests. Even so, they could trade votes to ensure their interests prevailed. We find that logrolling was significant, accounting for nearly one-quarter of the railway bills approved. We also quantify a negative externality to society from logrolling ranging from 1/3 to 1 percent of contemporary GDP.

Highlights

  • Vote trading among lawmakers can enable political rent-seeking but is difficult to identify

  • We focus on the nature of the institutions created by the British Parliament to approve Private Railway Bills and how that institutional structure enables us to identify logrolling

  • In addition to controlling for the predictors of logrolling opportunities, we control for a variety of MP social, political, and economic characteristics.[41]

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Summary

Rui EstEvEs and GabRiEl GEislER MEsEvaGE

Vote trading among lawmakers (logrolling) can enable political rent-seeking but is difficult to identify. We focus on the nature of the institutions created by the British Parliament to approve Private Railway Bills and how that institutional structure enables us to identify logrolling. We follow this with a description of methods to detect feasible opportunities for logrolling as well as the data, which we compiled from a variety of nineteenth-century sources. The new standing orders were structured around the principles of avoiding conflicts of interest and considering competing schemes together These were not uncontroversial choices, and during the 1830s many had argued that local MPs should oversee bills that affected their constituents because they had a duty to represent their interests and on the grounds that they possessed useful “local knowledge” (Williams 1949). 16 Hansard, 4 March 1844 vol 73 c516. See section “Data requirements.” The Sun, 29 June 1847

General Problem
Data Requirements
SPECIFICATION AND ESTIMATION
Results
Lag freetrade MP
Interpretation of ρ
ROBUSTNESS CHECKS
Omitted Variable Bias
Endogenous Network Formation
Freetrade MP
Fraction Edges Deleted
ASSESSING THE CONSEQUENCES OF LOGROLLING
MP count
Aggregate Loss
CONCLUSION
Full Text
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