The political benefits of the monoculture: Estimating the electoral effect of the market facilitation program
中文摘要
政府转移支付的分配是否会影响选举？我们分析了2019年美国农业部市场便利化项目（MFP）这一波次中的自然实验。2019年MFP通过一个结合历史产量数据与特定商品贸易损失的公式分配了145亿美元。我们展示了方法上的一处特殊之处如何导致这些损失出现任意变动，并通过该公式传导为过高的县级补偿率。我们采用一种新颖的、基于设计的随机化推断方法估计这一支付冲击的效应，以处理美国各县之间复杂的依赖关系。我们发现，平均而言，获得更高补偿率的县在2020年大选中的两党共和党总统得票份额更高。对2019年MFP实际拨付额采用工具变量识别，我们发现向一个县额外支付100万美元，平均使该县2020年两党特朗普得票份额提高约0.18个百分点。若2019年MFP维持2018年波次的支出水平，我们估计特朗普候选人的两党得票份额在全国范围内将低0.117个百分点，在亚利桑那（0.41个百分点）和佐治亚（0.159个百分点）等摇摆州，效应尤为明显。
Abstract
Does the distribution of government transfers affect elections? We analyze a natural experiment in the 2019 wave of the US Department of Agriculture’s Market Facilitation Program (MFP). The 2019 MFP allocated $14.5 billion via a formula combining historical production data and commodity-specific trade damages. We show how a methodological quirk resulted in arbitrary variation in these damages that propagated through the formula into excessive county-level compensation rates. We estimate the effects of this payment shock using a novel, design-based, randomization inference approach to account for complex dependencies across US counties. We find that counties receiving greater compensation rates, on average, have higher two-party Republican presidential vote shares in the 2020 election. Instrumenting for actual 2019 MFP disbursements, we find an additional $1 million in payments to a county increased that county’s 2020 two-party Trump vote share by about .18 percentage points on average. Had the 2019 MFP maintained the spending levels of the 2018 wave, we estimate that Candidate Trump’s two-party vote share would have been .117 percentage points lower nationally, with particularly pronounced effects in swing states like Arizona (.41 percentage points) and Georgia (.159 percentage points).