Political Connections, Allocation of Stimulus Spending, and the Jobs Multiplier

Any opinions and conclusions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Federal Reserve System, the Board of Governors, its staff, or the National Bureau of Economic Research. The authors thank Ufuk Akcigit, Salome Baslandze, Ryan Decker, Manuel García-Santana, Kinda Hachem, John Haltiwanger, Tarek Hassan, Thomas Hegland, Ethan Kaplan, Juan Rubio Ramirez, Frank Warnock, Daniel Wilson, and our discussant Elias Papaioannou, as well as seminar participants at the University of Maryland, the spring 2017 Midwest Macro Meetings, the 2017 North American Meeting of the Econometric Society, the 2017 European Meeting of the Econometric Society, Workshop on Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, the Federal Reserve Board, Georgetown University, the Fall 2019 I-85 Macroeconomics Workshop, the NBER EF&G 2022 Winter Meeting, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Auburn University, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the World Bank. We also thank Benjamin Delgado, KC Pringle, and Fiorella Pizzolon for their excellent research assistance.