The Apparent Ideological Behavior of Legislators: Testing for Principal-Agent Slack in Political Institutions

Abstract

* Joseph P. Kalt is Professor of Economics, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Mark A. Zupan is Assistant Professor of Economics, Finance and Business Economics Department, University of Southern California School of Business. Helpful comments have been provided by an anonymous referee as well as by Thomas Borcherding, Dennis Carlton, Harold Demsetz, John Lott, Terry Moe, Roger Noll, Sam Peltzman, Richard Schmalensee, and workshop participants at the California Institute of Technology, Claremont Graduate School, Duke University, George Mason University, Harvard University, Indiana University, Stanford University, the University of California (Irvine, Los Angeles, and Santa Barbara), the University of Chicago, the University of Delaware, the University of Illinois at Chicago, the University of Southern California, and Yale University. The financial support of the University of Southern California School of Business and the Research Center for Managerial Economics and Public Policy at the University of California, Los Angeles, Graduate School of Management is gratefully acknowledged. Elden Chang and Christopher Murdoch provided research assistance. See, for example: Geoffrey Brennan & James M. Buchanan, Voter Choice: Evaluating Political Alternatives, 24 Am. Behav. Scientist 185 (1984); Harold Demsetz, Amenity Potential and the Difference between Political Parties and Business Firms (working paper, Dep't Economics, Univ. California, Los Angeles, August 1988); William R. Dougan & Michael C. Munger, The Rationality of Ideology, 32 J. Law & Econ. 119 (1989); Joseph P. Kalt, The Economics and Politics of Oil Price Regulation (1981); Joseph P. Kalt & Mark A. Zupan, Capture and Ideology in the Economic Theory of Politics, 74 Am. Econ. Rev. 279 (1984); James B. Kau and Paul H. Rubin, Self-Interest, Ideology, and Logrolling in Congressional Voting, 22 J. Law & Econ. 365 (1979); Michael Levine, Revisionism Revised? Airline Regulation and the Public Interest, 44 Law & Contemp. Prob. 179 (1972); John R. Lott, Jr., Political Cheating, 52 Pub. Choice 169 (1987); John R. Lott, Jr., Ideological Shirking or Ideological Priors? Comments on Kalt-Zupan and Dougan-Munger (working paper, Dep't Economics, Rice Univ., March 1988); John R. Lott, Jr., & Robert W. Reed, Shirking and