eprintid: 18937
rev_number: 42
eprint_status: archive
userid: 2744
dir: disk0/00/01/89/37
datestamp: 2015-06-23 13:17:37
lastmod: 2016-01-19 16:12:41
status_changed: 2015-06-23 13:17:37
type: workingPaper
metadata_visibility: show
creators_name: Gehring, Kai 
creators_name: Schneider, Stephan A. 
title: Towards the Greater Good? EU Commissioners’ Nationality and Budget Allocation in the European Union
subjects: ddc-330
divisions: i-181000
keywords: Fiscal Federalism, Political Economy, Budget Allocation, European Union, EU Commission, EU Commissioners, National Origin
abstract: 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 Agriculture 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 endogenous treatment-selection. There are no significant differences 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 coefficient.
date: 2015-06
id_scheme: DOI
id_number: 10.11588/heidok.00018937
schriftenreihe_cluster_id: sr-3
schriftenreihe_order: 0596
ppn_swb: 1657084248
own_urn: urn:nbn:de:bsz:16-heidok-189373
language: eng
bibsort: GEHRINGKAITOWARDSTHE201506
full_text_status: public
series: Discussion Paper Series, University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics
volume: 0596
place_of_pub: Heidelberg
pages: 38
citation:   Gehring, Kai  ; Schneider, Stephan A.   (2015) Towards the Greater Good? EU Commissioners’ Nationality and Budget Allocation in the European Union.  [Working paper]     
document_url: https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/18937/1/gehring_schneider_2015_dp596.pdf