Key-drivers of EU budget allocation: Does power matter?

We examine the determinants of the EU budget expenditures allocation among different countries. Following previous literature, we consider two alternative explanations for the EU budget distribution: political power vs. 'needs view'. Taking the original data set (1976-2001) from Kauppi and Widgren (2004) we analyze whether their predictions stay robust while applying a different measure of power. We find that the nucleolus is a good alternative to the Shapley-Shubik index in the distributive situations such as the EU budget allocation. Our results also show that the relative weight of political power when explaining budget shares is lower than previous models' predictions