Abstract
The divestiture of the House Appropriations Committee in the1880's has received considerable attention of an empiricalnature. This paper presents a formal model of legislativedecisionmaking, using a common agency formulation to representinterest group lobbying of legislators. This framework is usedto analyze the effects of decentralizing appropriationsauthority. The conditions under which decentralization leadsto higher spending are characterized. It is argued that theconventional view that divestiture caused higher levels ofspending only holds if decentralization created barriers tolobbying and political bargaining across different committees.In addition, the role of specialized committee knowledge isexamined.
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Dharmapala, D. Budgetary Policy With Unified and Decentralized Appropriations Authority. Public Choice 115, 347–367 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1024205130807
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1024205130807