Are Contributors Rational? Untangling Strategies of Political Action Committees
通过切换回归模型分析农业政治行动委员会在三个选举周期中的捐款行为，发现捐款者并非不理性，而是倾向于资助那些摇摆不定的议员，同时减少对农业选区议员的捐款，因为后者本就会支持其利益。
Empirical public choice literature and casual observation suggest that the behavior of political action committees is remarkably unsophisticated, meaning that PACs give to those legislators who would support their interests anyway. Thus it is suggested that contributor behavior deviates from rational behavior, which is a cornerstone of economic analysis. In this paper, a switching regression model is estimated that allows for strategies of PACs to vary for different contribution recipients. I analyze the behavior of farm PACs over three election cycles. In contrast to previous findings, I find that contributor behavior is not inconsistent with rational behavior. Contributors who attempt to influence the voting behavior of members of Congress give the most money to legislators whose constituency interest suggests that they are likely to be undecided on how to vote and PACs give less money to legislators who represent districts with larger farm populations because those legislators are likely to vote in contributor interests anyway.