The Making of Financial Regulation - Voting on the U.s. Congress

Abstract: This paper studies the voting patterns of members of the U.S. Congress on financial regulation between 1991 and 2014. It uses the most comprehensive dataset assembled on campaign contributions from the financial sector and it is the first study on this subject taking a long-term perspective. This long-term approach on a binary dependent variable regression with unbalanced panel data allows me to address the problem of endogeneity in a new and more rigorous manner. This happens because I have multiple votes on the same bill. I find that campaign contributions are the strongest driver of congressional voting. This variable increases the likelihood of voting in favour of deregulatory bills.