This GitHub repository contains the replication materials and the documented R code for my Job Market Paper "Number of Legislators, Bargaining Costs, and Provision of Local Public Goods".
My contact: Umberto Mignozzetti.
Abstract: What is the effect of the number of legislators on public service provision? Despite the importance of institution designs for young democracies, little is known about the particular features that may help improve welfare. This paper uses a formal model to show how increasing legislature size may affect service provision. I show that changes in bargaining costs depend on whether the additional legislator shares the Executive's party affiliation: More opposition members reduce the Executive's equilibrium public goods provision, while more government-aligned members increase it. I test this theory by exploiting sharp discontinuities in city council size in Brazil. I show that an additional city councilor has a 91% chance of belonging to the mayoral coalition, significantly improving primary school enrollment and infant mortality. To investigate the mechanism, I surveyed former councilors and analyzed 346,553 bills proposed between 2005 and 2008. This paper has implications for the design of representative institutions.
Keywords: Legislature Size; Legislative Bargaining; Local Public Goods Provision; Regression Discontinuity Design; Brazil