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An Economic Interpretation of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 Revisited

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2007

Jac C. Heckelman  and
Keith L. Dougherty
Jac C. Heckelman
Affiliation:
Professor and Reinsch/Pierce Faculty Fellow, Department of Economics, Wake Forest University, 110 Carswell Hall, Winston-Salem, NC 27109. E-mail: heckeljc@wfu.edu.
Keith L. Dougherty
Affiliation:
Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, 104 Baldwin Hall, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602. E-mail: dougherk@uga.edu.
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Abstract

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.

Type
ARTICLES
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 67 , Issue 4 , December 2007 , pp. 829 - 848
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 2007

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