  We examine the determinants of the EU budget expenditures allocation among
different countries. In line with earlier literature, we consider two
alternative explanations for the EU budget distribution: political power vs.
needs view. Extending the original data set from Kauppi and Widgr\'en (2004),
we analyze the robustness of their predictions when applying a different
measure of power and more sophisticated econometric techniques. We conclude
that the nucleolus is a good alternative to the Shapley-Shubik index in
distributive situations such as the case of EU budget allocation. Our results
also show that when explaining budget shares, the relative weight of political
power based on the nucleolus is lower than the predictions of previous studies
based on the Shapley-Shubik index.
