[gov3009-l] Lenz on ``Getting Rich(er) in Office? Corrpution and Wealth Accumulation in Congress"

Dear Applied Statistics Workshop Participants, Please join us this Wednesday when Gabriel Lenz, MIT Department of Political Science, will present ``Getting Rich(er) in Office? Corruption and Wealth Accumulation in Congress", work that is joint with Kevin Lim. Gabe provided the following abstract: How corrupt is Congress? We provide an indirect test by comparing wealth accumulation from 1995 to 2005 among members of the U.S. House of Representatives and members of the public. Data on representatives are from Personal Financial Disclosure forms and data on the public are from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). To test whether representatives accumulate wealth at a faster rate than expected, we construct counterfactuals based on the PSID with two approaches. We first use statistical models, conditioning on asset distribution over stocks, bonds, businesses, and land, as well as demographic variables. These models find representatives accumulating wealth about 20 percent faster than expected. Second, we employ matching. Unlike the modeling approach, matching finds an almost identical rate of wealth accumulation among both groups. Further analysis reveals that matching reduces bias from several incorrect functional form assumptions in the statistical models. We thus conclude that representatives report accumulating wealth at a rate consistent with similar non-representatives, suggesting no aggregate corruption. Besides examining overall wealth accumulation, we also test for effects of committee assignments, safe seats, career trajectories, and campaign contributions The Applied Statistics Workshop meets each Wednesday at 12 noon in K-354 CGIS-Knafel (1737 Cambridge St). The workshop begins with a light lunch and presentations usually start around 1215 and last until about 130 pm. Hope you can make it Cheers Justin Grimmer