Optimal effort allocation by US Senators: The role of constituency size

Legislators in a representative democracy are modeled as being able to allocate a fixed amount of effort between two objectives: national policymaking and local benefit-seeking. The model predicts that the effort allocated to local benefit-seeking should be a negative function of the population size of a legislator's constituency. We empirically test and confirm this prediction by examining the manner in which United States senators allocate their personal staff between home state and Washington D.C. offices.