Electoral district magnitude varies across German electoral constituencies and over legislative periods
due to Germany’s mixed-member electoral system. The allocation of legislative seats to constituencies
from party lists is effectively random. This setting permits us to investigate exogenous variations in
district magnitude on federal resource allocation. We analyze the effect of having more than one
federal representative per constituency on federal government resources by exploiting information
from 1,375 German constituencies from 1998 to 2017. More legislators per district lead to statistically
significantly more employment of federal civil servants in the respective constituencies that profit
from additional legislative representation. The size of the effect corresponds to about 34 federal civil
servants once a constituency is represented by additional legislators from party lists. A battery of
robustness tests supports our results. Further evidence points to some heterogeneity of the effect and
particularly constituencies represented by additional legislators who are experienced and from larger,
competing parties obtain more federal resources.
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