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Regulators and Redskins. Bentley Coffey, Patrick A. McLaughlin, Robert D. Tollison Received: 17 November 2009 / Accepted: 25 February 2011 Presentation by: Summer Dickey. Existing Data. ( Ekelund et al. 1994) Rent seeking
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Regulators and Redskins Bentley Coffey, Patrick A. McLaughlin, Robert D. Tollison Received: 17 November 2009 / Accepted: 25 February 2011 Presentation by: Summer Dickey
Existing Data • (Ekelund et al. 1994) • Rent seeking • Barro 1973; Becker and Stigler 1974; McCormick & Tollison 1978; Besley 2006 • Higher pay is deterrent to corruption • Carlino and Coulson (2004) • Housing rents about 8% higher in cities with NFL teams • Wages about 2% lower in areas with teams • Coates and Gearhart (2008) • No evidence that either a NASCAR track or NASCAR event affects housing rents positively or negatively • Coates and Humphreys (2002) • Residents of cities whose teams won Super Bowls experience a small but statistically significant increase in real per capita personal income in the same year *None that directly tests impact of amenities on bureaucratic behavior
Regulators and Redskins Does the performance of the Washington Redskin have any impact on federal government activity? • : Wage Hedonics • Role of federal government’s compensation package in attracting and retaining skilled laborers • : Transaction Costs • Each federal employee’s objective is to maximize his/her power *Not mutually exclusive
Pages of Federal Register each quarter and the Redskins end of season WP
Ratio of quarterly Federal Register pages to RGDP (FR pages/RGDP)
Econometric Model u well-behaved disturbance term R page count of the Federal Register W history of Redskins W-L record Q() maps history into a current measure of team’s quality GDP control variable that captures general trend of R increasing over time with the size of the economy *Winning Percentage (WP) at that point in the current season
Results • Quarterly • Federal Register pages positively correlated to WP and significant at 1% level • RGDP significantly positive • For an increase in the WP in 2007 from .50 to 1.0, predicts a 9% increase in the quarterly pages of the Federal Register • Annual • Significant positive correlation with previous season’s WP or playoff berths • Congressional Behavior • No Redskin effects • Washington area sports teams
Conclusions • At least one local amenity – a winning professional football team – is associated with more regulatory output from the federal government • Existence of winning football team may simply provide an environment conducive to logrolling • Could explain use of public funds to subsidize teams • Thoughts on the paper…