Previous empirical studies have found little evidence that voters reward incumbent members of Congress for bringing federal dollars to their district. One explanation for these findings is that incumbents who are in danger of losing reelection exert more effort to obtain federal funds. To...

Previous studies of congressional spending have typically found a large positive effect of challenger spending but little evidence for effects of incumbent spending. Those studies, however, do not adequately control for inherent differences in vote-getting ability across candidates. This paper...