期刊名称：Discussion Paper Series / Universität Heidelberg, Department of Economics
出版年度：2015
出版社：Universität Heidelberg, Department of Economics
摘要：We analyse whether there is a relationship between EU Commissioners' national origin and political outcomes. For this purpose, we argue that examining the Commissioner for Agricul- ture allows the most precise empirical identification: there is a specific budget for agriculture which accounts for the largest share of the overall EU budget and gives significant leeway to the Commissioner. On average, providing the Commissioners is associated with increases in the share of the overall EU budget that is allocated to their country of origin of about one percentage point. This increase corresponds to half a billion Euro per year, a significant change in particular for smaller member states. Alternative explanations are considered using country-specific time trends, examining pre- and post-treatment trends and modeling en- dogenous treatment-selection. There are no significant di.erences in trend behavior between treated and non-treated countries both before and after providing the Commissioner. We demonstrate that our results are not driven by individual countries and show that selection- on-unobservables would have to be implausibly high to account for the estimated coe.cient
关键词：Fiscal Federalism; Political Economy; Budget Allocation; European Union; EU ; Commission; EU Commissioners; National Origin
