Empirical analysis of campaign contributions and Congressional 'greeness'

Abstract

“Legislators possess political assets that economic interest groups may find valuable in pursuing their goals”. This quote made by Kevin Grier and Michael Munger provides the impetus for my analysis. In the following paper I apply this theory to specific environmental legislation and ask the following question. Do politicians, who vote favorably for the environment, experience “consumer” approval in the form of differentially high campaign contributions relative to politicians who do not vote in favor of environmentally-friendly policies? This paper asks whether or not the quotation above applies in the environmental arena. The model used to indicate such ‘legislative attributes’ has been augmented with a scoring system for a congressman’s environmental voting record. Through this model I attempt to discover whether or not congressmen face a financial incentive to vote favorably on environmental issues.