The Impact of Office Proximity in Legislative Decision-Making: Evidence from Brazil
Abstract: Spatial proximity within the congress is an important source of peer effects, as it influences the patterns of social interactions of legislators and their decision-making. I take advantage of a randomized office lottery in the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies to estimate the effects of spatial proximity on legislative decision-making. I find that office proximity increases agreement between neighboring legislators in contested votes; they show a significant 2 percentage points increase in voting convergence, about eight times the average effect observed across all voting decisions. Furthermore, the presence of experts, such as committee members, amplifies this effect to 4.5 p.p. in closely contested votes. These findings indicate that office proximity enhances other sources of influence in contested decisions, with its effects primarily driven by expertise. This aligns with cue-taking theories, suggesting that legislators rely on perceived experts -- often standing committee members responsible for reporting the measure -- to guide their voting behavior, particularly in closely contested scenarios.
Published, or working papers:
de Figueredo, Felipe C., Mueller, Bernardo and Daniel O. Cajueiro. A natural language measure of ideology in the Brazilian Senate (2022). Revista Brasileira de Ciência Política, nº 37, p. 1-32, 246618. https://doi.org/10.1590/0103-3352.2022.37.246618.
de Figueredo, Felipe C. Double Machine Learning for Price Elasticity Estimation: Leveraging Unstructured Data from the Steam Digital Store. Working Paper (2025). Link.
de Figueredo, Felipe C. and Ana C. Almeida. The Impact of Internet Infrastructure Expansion on Labor Demand: Evidence from Brazil's Broadband Policy. Working Paper (2025).