Congressional distributive politics and state economic performance

States that were represented by very senior Democratic congressmen grew mor e quickly during the 1953-1990 period than states that were represented by more junior congressional delegations. States with a large fraction of poli tically competitive House districts also grew faster than average. The firs t finding is consistent with traditional legislator-based models of distrib utive politics, the second with partisan models. We cannot detect any subst antively important association between seniority, state political competiti on, and the geographic distribution of federal funds, so higher district-sp ecific federal spending does not appear to be the source of the link betwee n state economic growth and congressional representation.