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Finally, Nebraska: A Synthetic Control Analysis Of Legislative Structure, William B. Hankins

Research, Publications & Creative Work

I estimate the impact of Nebraska’s 1937 switch from a bicameral to a unicameral legislature on state-level government expenditures. Using the synthetic control method I create a counterfactual Nebraska from a weighted-average of other potential control states and compare spending in this “synthetic Nebraska” to spending in the real Nebraska. Relative to the synthetic control, Nebraska experiences a sharp decrease in expenditures per capita immediately following the switch to a unicameral legislature, however, the difference appears to diminish over time. Placebo tests show that if the change in Nebraska’s legislative structure were randomly assigned amongst the sample of states, and …