Abstract
Using data on roll calls from the U.S. House of Representatives, this paper finds
empirical support for informational theories of legislative decision-making. Consistent
with the theoretical prediction, the bias of the committee a bill gets assigned to
is strongly positively associated with the bias of its sponsor, and unbiased sponsors
in expectation get assigned to roughly unbiased committees. Moreover, we find a negative
relationship between the sponsor's absolute bias and the probability that the legislation
is processed by closed rule. Despite these empirical regularities, there is a large
variation in the data, suggesting that considerations other than informational efficiency
are also important in committee appointments and procedural rule selection. As far
as we know, our paper is the first one that provides quantitative empirical support
for a theory of cheap talk versus delegation, in any setting.
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