| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
| 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 |
| 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 |
| 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 |
| 29 | 30 |
Authors' Committee
Chair:
Matt Blackwell (Gov)
Members:
Martin Andersen (HealthPol)Kevin Bartz (Stats)
Deirdre Bloome (Social Policy)
Andy Eggers (Gov)
John Graves (HealthPol)
Rich Nielsen (Gov)
Maya Sen (Gov)
Gary King (Gov)
Weekly Research Workshop Sponsors
Alberto Abadie, Lee Fleming, Adam Glynn, Guido Imbens, Gary King, Arthur Spirling, Jamie Robins, Don Rubin, Chris Winship
Recent Comments
- Re: Bill Support by Page Length
By: Aaron K
Recent Entries
- secrets of rating success
- Netflix queues by zip code
- Sequential Ideal Points
- Relative Distributions
- Discovering Causal Knowledge?
- Spirling cited in Nature, underlying pattern of human conflict found
- a cautionary christmas tale
- Happy Holidays?
- competition and the N-effect
- Academic Specialization Time and Career Switches -- Malamud Working Paper
Categories
Blogroll
Brad DeLongCognitive Daily
Complexity & Social Networks
Developing Intelligence
EconLog
The Education Wonks
Empirical Legal Studies
Free Exchange
Freakonomics
Health Care Economist
Junk Charts
Language Log
Law & Econ Prof Blog
Machine Learning (Theory)
Marginal Revolution
Mixing Memory
Mystery Pollster
New Economist
Political Arithmetik
Political Science Methods
Pure Pedantry
Science & Law Blog
Simon Jackman
Social Science++
Statistical modeling, causal inference, and social science
Archives
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
- February 2006
- January 2006
- December 2005
- November 2005
- October 2005
- September 2005
Notification
« Answering "why" questions | Main | Choosing variances in general linear models »
12 November 2009
Bill Support by Page Length
There was a lot of press on the 1,000+-page length of the House health care bill, H.R. 3962. That got me thinking... didn't we hear the same thing about the stimulus bill and the Patriot Act? Aren't most "controversial" bills also very long?
It would make sense. Controversial bills require a lot more ink -- pork, special cases, exceptions -- to reel in support. Uncontroversial bills can be written succinctly and pass as is.
To assess this I scraped bills from OpenCongress, which maintains the full text, voting results and amendment history of House and Senate Resolutions. You can even comment on specific portions of bills. There's already a bunch of neat comments on potential loopholes in H.R. 3962.
I downloaded the text and voting results for all 152 House resolutions passed by the 111th House. A boxplot of page length against support appears below. Each page length group represents roughly 20% of House resolutions. The plot shows the suspected trend, that longer bills have less support. One-page bills almost always pass unanimously!
Posted by Kevin Bartz at November 12, 2009 10:12 AM