Voting in the Bicameral Congress: Large Majorities as a Signal of Quality
41 Pages Posted: 7 Oct 2009 Last revised: 4 Feb 2012
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: Suggested Citation
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