Bulletin n. 3/2007 | ||
December 2007 | ||
Heckelman Jac C. , Dougherty Keith L. |
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An Economic Interpretation of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 Revisited | ||
in Journal of Economic History (The) , Volume 67 - Issue 04 , 2007 , 829-84 | ||
Empirical studies of delegate voting at the Constitutional Convention have relied on the same 16 roll call votes. This article re-examines various assumptions used in the collection of these data. We first create a baseline regression. We then consider the effect of dropping delegates not in attendance, re-inferring the votes from primary sources, examining various subsamples of the roll calls, and reconstructing constituency variables to include state districts. Our findings suggest that personal interests were indeed important for decision making at the Constitutional Convention, but constituent interests were less important than previously claimed. | ||