Voting in the Bicameral Congress: Large Majorities as a Signal of Quality

41 Pages Posted: 7 Oct 2009 Last revised: 4 Feb 2012

See all articles by Matias Iaryczower

Matias Iaryczower

Princeton University

Gabriel Katz

California Institute of Technology - Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences

Sebastian M. Saiegh

University of California, San Diego (UCSD) - Department of Political Science

Date Written: September 30, 2009

Abstract

We estimate a model of voting in Congress that allows for dispersed information about the quality of proposals in an equilibrium context. In equilibrium, the Senate only approves House bills that receive the support of a supermajority of members of the House. We estimate this endogenous supermajority rule to be about four-fifths on average across policy areas. Our results indicate that the value of information dispersed among legislators is significant, and that in equilibrium a large fraction of House members (40-50 %) vote following their private information. Finally, we show that the probability of a type I error in Congress (not passing a good bill) is on average about twice as high as the probability of a type II error (passing a low quality bill)

Keywords: bicameralism, legislatures, roll call votes, information transmission, MCMC, finite mixture models

JEL Classification: D72, D78, C13

Suggested Citation

Iaryczower, Matias and Katz, Gabriel and Saiegh, Sebastian M., Voting in the Bicameral Congress: Large Majorities as a Signal of Quality (September 30, 2009). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1483791 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1483791

Matias Iaryczower (Contact Author)

Princeton University ( email )

Corwin Hall
Princeton, NJ 08544-1012
United States

Gabriel Katz

California Institute of Technology - Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences ( email )

1200 East California Blvd.
Pasadena, CA 91125
United States

Sebastian M. Saiegh

University of California, San Diego (UCSD) - Department of Political Science ( email )

9500 Gilman Drive
Code 0521
La Jolla, CA 92093-0521
United States

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