James M. Snyder Jr. This paper formulates and estimates a rigorously-justified linear probability model of binary choices over alternatives characterized by unobserved attributes. The model is applied to estimate preferences of congressmen as expressed in their votes on bills. The effective dimension of the attribute space characterizing votes is larger than what has been estimated in recent influential studies of congressional voting by Poole and Rosenthal.
Congressmen vote on more than ideology.
The estimated dimension is too large for the median voter model to describe congressional voting Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 5785. If you experience problems downloading a file check if you have the proper application to view it first. Information about this may be contained in the File-Format links below. Please be patient as the files may be large. Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided.