the impact of campaign expenditures on political competition in the french legislative elections of 1993 we use regression analysis to estimate the effect that campaign money had on the votes of challengers and incumbents in the 1993 elections to the french legislative assembly incumbent candidates can at best expect to win 1 01 of the popular vote for each extra franc they spend per registered voter in their district challengers can expect to win at least twice as much as this simulations show that if campaign spending ceilings were halved incumbents would have gained an extra ten percent of the popular vote over their closest challenging rivals the regression analysis also suggests that voters react negatively to candidates who rely heavily on their own money for their outlays and reward candidates who rely on contributions from private individuals these results suggest that campaign spending ceilings may inhibit political competition and that voters may resist a candidate who relies on narrow sources of funding

agricultural competitiveness the case of the united states and major eu countries abstract growth in the agricultural gdp of four major european countries is compared with us agricultural growth for the period 1974 1993 the agricultural sector s relative prices are taken into account along with economy wide factor market adjustments for denmark france germany and the uk the effects of declining real prices and changes in input levels on growth in agricultural gdp are relatively small total factor productivity tfp growth appears to be the major contributor to european agricultural gdp growth in comparison tfp is the major source of growth in us agricultural gdp but its rate of growth is lower than the european countries in contrast the declining real prices for us agriculture had a relatively large effect on its gdp however in recent years the effects of declining real prices and declining rates of growth in tfp on european agriculture are relatively large in the longer run the relative competitiveness of us agriculture is largely dependent on its ability to sustain and increase growth in tfp

selling favors in the lab experiments on campaign finance reform campaign advertising can provide benefits to constituencies when used to fund the distribution of useful information but voters can be harmed if candidates finance such advertising by trading policy favors to special interests in exchange for contributions we report data from novel laboratory campaign finance experiments that shed light on this tradeoff and that provide rigorous empirical evidence on formal campaign finance theory our key finding is that voters respond to advertising differently between special interest and publicly financed campaigns and that the nature of this difference is qualitatively consistent with formal models predictions

competing for endorsements endorsements are a simple language for communication between interest group leaders and group members the members who share policy concerns may not perfectly understand where their interests lie on certain issues if their leaders cannot fully explain the issues they can convey some information by endorsing a candidate or party when interest groups endorse legislative contenders the candidates may compete for backing policies may favor special interests at the expense of the general public the authors examine the conditions under which parties compete for endorsements the extent to which policy outcomes are skewed and the normative properties of the political equilibria

belief based refinements in signalling games abstract there are many economic problems which when modelled as games of incomplete information give rise to many sequential equilibria severely limiting the usefulness of the model there has recently been a large literature devoted to refining the set of equilibria in order to reduce this multiplicity by restricting the set of admissible disequilibrium beliefs this paper argues that the logical foundations of some refinements and the equilibria they focus on are problematic and further proposes an alternative refinement that avoids the difficulties we also provide an existence theorem covering a broad class of signalling games often studied in economics journal of economic literature classification numbers c72 c70 d82

information aggregation through costly political action information about various policy alternatives is dispersed among the individual members of a society prior to a vote over the alternatives some people take costly political action to signal their private information to voters by informing voting decisions political action has potential to decrease the likelihood that voters cast mistaken votes perhaps surprisingly preelection communication may be counterproductive the dispersed information is partially aggregated by the vote and political action may contribute noise to the voting process in some cases the voting mechanism is more likely to implement the full information voting outcome in the absence of preelection political action copyright 1994 by american economic association

hormone beef chlorinated chicken and international trade abstract we study international trade in innovative goods subject to uncertain consumer health effects such goods are often at the center of international trade disputes we show that an interesting form of protectionism may arise because of scientific uncertainty a free riding effect is identified implying more conservative behavior by countries we also study the role of producers lobbies in providing valuable information finding that the innovative lobby has an advantage in providing information as compared with the lobby producing the traditional good moreover lobbies disclose more information when the health effects are long lasting

some talk money in politics a partial review of the literature the financing of political campaigns is an area of active scholarly study i review some of the recent literature and discuss important methodological issues that arise in empir ical research on campaign expenditures and campaign contributions the effects of campaign expenditures and advertising on candidate and ballot measure elections are summarized as are the impacts of contributions on contributors welfare many states have changed their campaign finance laws in the past few years and i describe work that exploits variations in these laws a discussion of the strategies used by interest groups to allocate their campaign contributions provides insights into contributors motives

i m not a high quality firm but i play one on tv this article investigates the role of noise in a multidimensional signalling game a monopolist that offers a high or low quality product can signal its quality to consumers through its selection of price and advertising it is shown that when the advertising channel is noisy there is no separating equilibrium where the monopolist will simultaneously employ both signalling mechanisms advertising will take place only when price is uncorrelated to quality furthermore the noise complicates the process of consumer inference this enables a low quality firm to take advantage of consumer ignorance by partially mimicking the strategy of the high quality firm

the war of information we analyse political contests campaigns between two parties with opposing interests parties provide costly information to voters who choose a policy the information flow is continuous and stops when both parties quit parties actions are strategic substitutes increasing one party s cost makes that party provide more and its opponent provide less information for voters parties actions are complements and hence raising the advantaged party s cost may be beneficial asymmetric information adds a signalling component resulting in a belief threshold at which the informed party s decision to continue campaigning offsets other unfavourable information

money talks an experimental investigation of cheap talk and burned money we experimentally study the strategic transmission of information in a setting where both cheap talk and money can be used for communication purposes theoretically a large number of equilibria exist side by side in which senders either use costless messages money or a combination of the two we find that senders prefer to communicate through costless messages only when the interest disalignment between sender and receiver increases cheap talk tends to break down and high sender types start burning money to enhance the credibility of their costless messages a behavioral model due to kartik 2009 assuming that sellers bear a cost of lying fits the data best

campaign finance reform and electoral competition comment campaign finance regulation is an important issue for democracies proponents of stricter contribution limits believe it will improve competitiveness opponents argue that contribution caps are just a mask for incumbency protection this paper comments on john lott s 2006 article in campaign finance reform and electoral competition in public choice

electoral campaign financing the role of public contributions and party ideology this article analyzes the effects of public financing of electoral campaigns on policies announced by ideologically oriented parties subject to pre electoral lobbying parties ideologies make politicians announce divergent platforms even though it means losing some votes divergent platforms in turn make lobbies actually contribute to parties electoral campaigns the announced platforms are biased in favor of the parties ideology and interest groups preferred policies finally increasing public financing of electoral campaigns may generate unequal electoral competition and may significantly raise the chances of one party becoming hegemonic wiping out party competition in the long run

information and strategic political polarisation we develop a model of electoral competition in which two opportunistic candidates select their policy position and invest in quality policy positions are observed and during the campaign the press reveals some information about quality we demonstrate that when information is imperfect the blackdowns median voter theorem fails to hold for intermediate information levels the unique equilibrium is such that candidates propose policies different from the median voter s bliss point by contrast convergence to the median occurs when quality is almost always or almost never revealed we also show that a profit maximising press may collect more information than socially optimal during the 1995 electoral campaign in belgium the vld a traditionally right wing

campaign spending with office seeking politicians rational voters and multiple lobbies abstract i introduce a microfounded model of campaign finance with office seeking politicians a continuum of voters and a large number of heterogeneous lobbies lobbies make contributions to politicians according to a common agency framework politicians use contributions to finance their electoral expenditures voters are not fooled by electoral expenditures they are influenced in a way that is consistent with the equilibrium behavior of lobbies and politicians the model is used to i determine the relation between campaign spending and the deviation from the median voter s preferred policy ii show the informational value of lobbies contributions iii evaluate the welfare implications of restricting campaign spending and iv interpret the empirical finding that campaign expenditures have a very low effect on election outcome although in equilibrium advertising provides voters with useful information under reasonable parameter values a ban on campaign contributions makes the median voter better off journal of economic literature classification numbers d72 d82 m37

incumbency advantage and political campaign spending limits abstract this paper presents a model which captures the three main arguments for and against campaign spending limits campaign spending limits are purported to restrict the incumbent s ability to exploit his fundraising advantage in contrast to conventional wisdom a ceiling increases the incumbent s probability of victory regardless of the candidates relative fundraising abilities as long as the challenger is not more effective in campaign spending if the challenger is more effective in campaign spending ceilings have a non monotonic effect when the incumbent enjoys a mild initial voter disposition advantage a moderate ceiling decreases the incumbent s probability of victory but further restricting the limit favors the incumbent irrespective of incumbency status the marginal benefit to quality decreases with a more restrictive cap in an open seat contest a more restrictive limit improves the electoral prospects of the superior quality candidate stricter ceilings may lead to the unintended consequence of increased expected spending

an experimental study of alternative campaign finance systems transparency donations and policy choices we experimentally study the transparency effect of alternative campaign finance systems on donations election outcomes policy choices and welfare three alternatives are considered one where donors preferences and donations are unobserved by the candidate and public one where they are observed by the candidate but not the public and one where they are observed by all we label them full anonymity fa partial anonymity pa and no anonymity na respectively we find that in na and pa candidates consistently respond to donations by choosing policies favoring the donors fa in contrast is the most successful in limiting the influence of donations on policy choices donors benefit greatly from the possibility of donations whereas social welfare may be harmed in some treatments to our knowledge this article is the first to investigate the effect of different campaign finance systems distinguished by their transparency level jel d72

political contribution caps and lobby formation theory and evidence abstract the perceived importance of special interest group money in election campaigns motivates widespread use of caps on allowable contributions we present a bargaining model in which the effect of a cap that is not too stringent on the amount a lobby can contribute improves its bargaining position relative to the politician it thus increases the payoff from lobbying which will therefore increase the equilibrium number of lobbies when lobby formation is endogenous caps may then also increase aggregate contributions from lobbies and increase politically motivated government spending we present empirical evidence from u s states that support various predictions of the model we find a positive effect on the number of pacs formed from enacting laws constraining pac contributions moreover the estimated effect is non linear as predicted by the theoretical model very stringent caps reduce the number of pacs but as the cap increases above a threshold level the effect becomes positive contribution caps in the majority of u s states are above this threshold

one man one dollar campaign contribution limits equal influence and political communication arguably the most important campaign finance regulations in u s federal elections are limits imposed on individual campaign contributions one of the principal arguments in support of these contribution limits has been that they equalize the influence of individual donors and thereby cause candidates aggregate financial resources to more accurately reflect public support i construct a formal model to evaluate this argument the analysis shows that a necessary condition for it to apply is that a candidate s reliance on large contributions is negatively related to voter preferred characteristics which cannot be credibly revealed through campaign advertisements using data on elections to the house of representatives between 1992 and 2000 i find no evidence that such a relationship exists this result casts doubt on the equalization argument in support of campaign contribution limits

an analysis of the impact of interest rate ceilings the first aim of this study is to estimate the interest rates paid for motor vehicle loans the second aim is to identify those potential borrowers most likely to be rationed out of the market by the imposition of rate ceilings rate ceilings constrain the rates paid by successful loan applicants to be no greater than the applicable ceiling level these constraints are dealt with by treating the interest rate paid as a variable truncated at the ceiling level assuming the dependent variable is truncated normal consistent estimates are obtained by employing the maximum likelihood method of hausman and wise

coordination economies advertising and search behavior in retail markets we introduce a model of the retail firm in which consumers and active firms benefit collectively from coordination of sales at fewer firms using this model we show that ostensibly uninformative advertising plays a key role in bringing about coordination economies by directing consumer search toward firms that offer the best deals optimal consumer search takes the form of a simple rule of thumb that uses observed advertising information to guide search both industry concentration and social surplus are higher in the presence of advertising relative to a no advertising benchmark jel d83 l15 many observed advertisements seem to be at odds with rational behavior in a variety of ads mostly on tv and radio multiproduct sellers provide little hard information choosing instead to impart only vague slogans that are suggestive of good deals examples are plentiful a hardware store

interest groups and the electoral control of politicians abstract we develop a model of interest group influence in the presence of repeated electoral competition in each period of the game an interest group attempts to buy an incumbent s policy choice and a voter chooses whether to replace the incumbent with an unknown challenger the voter faces a tension between retaining good politician types and rewarding past performance the model predicts that above average incumbents face little discipline but others are disciplined increasingly and re elected at a higher rate as the interest group becomes more extreme extensions of the model consider term limits long lived groups and multiple groups

trade protection and the role of campaign contributions in u s food and tobacco industries to exert political pressure an organization must be capable of obtaining contributions from its members for lobbying activities for this reason past studies analyzing the determinants of political outcomes such as tariffs such as caves 1976 lavergne 1983 saunders 1980 salamon and siegfried 1977 ray 1981a 1981b have used an industry s structural characteristics such as the number of firms and the sales concentration ratio to account for political activity more recently baldwin 1989 among other economists has advocated the study of more direct indicators of lobbying such as political funding levels and the number of employees supported by private interests the importance of lobbying activity in determining the levels of trade protection depends upon the responsiveness of government to such activity bhagwati 1989 distinguishes two types of government behavior passive behavior and self willed behavior under the first type policymakers maximize political support and will be more likely to respond to lobbying activity 1 however if behavior is driven by self willed principles then policymakers will make choices that reflect the needs of their constituents and will be less susceptible to special interest group pressures viewed from the perspective of an industry that is willing to spend resources in order to influence political outcomes contributions to political candidates can have a facilitative and or a persuasive role 2 under a facilitative role campaign contributions are merely a transaction cost for granting access and enabling the industry to inform politicians about the industry s needs in this case the industry structural characteristics are what lend political weight under a persuasive role campaign contributions are independently effective in influencing political outcomes regardless of the industry s structural attributes combining the latter role with the passive government behavior discussed above gives rise to models of exchange and political investment as in the work of peltzman 1976 concern over identifying the determinants of trade barriers and the role of campaign contributions in particular follow from three considerations the first consideration is efficiency if institutional arrangements encourage lobbying as a means of influencing policy choices then a significant waste of resources may occur through competition in the political arena 3 lobbying therefore may result in a decline of overall economic efficiency the second consideration is the dominance of special interests over social concerns the arguments for protection often include protection of jobs and unfair competition which may differ from the factors that drive the policy decisions such as the strength of special interest lobbying the third consideration is redistributional justice a significant redistribution of wealth may occur as trade barriers increase prices and domestic industry profits at the expense of domestic consumers the objectives of this article are twofold the first objective is to explain the variation of the level of trade barriers tariffs and import quota tariff equivalents these will be explained in terms of industry structure characteristics number of firms seller concentration and geographic dispersion comparative disadvantage and lobbying activities using data from the u s food and tobacco manufacturing industries for the empirical analysis the second objective is to ascertain the role and importance of lobbying activities in determining the levels of trade barriers a novel feature of this article is that it incorporates more direct measures of lobbying activity such as the contributions of political action committees pacs associated with the industries affected by the trade barriers it also emphasizes the need to consider contributions and protection together in order to capture the exchange between political investments and income transfers as shown in snyder 1990

campaign contributions and access an important and pervasive view of campaign contributions is that they are given to promote access to successful candidates under circumstances when such access would not ordinarily be given in this story access is valuable as it offers groups the opportunity to influence legislative decisions through the provision of policy relevant information under complete information regarding donors policy preferences i argue that this model predicts a negative relationship between contributions and the extent to which the groups and the recipient legislators preferences are similar however one of the more robust empirical findings in the literature is that this relationship is positive relaxing the informational assumption on donors preferences i reexamine the access story with a model in which campaign contributions can act as signals of policy preference and the informational value of access to any agent is endogenous

sequential or simultaneous elections a welfare analysis sequential or simultaneous this paper addresses a key question on the design of electoral systems should all voters vote on the same day or should elections be staggered with late voters observing early returns before making their decisions using a model of voting and social learning we illustrate that sequential elections place too much weight on the preferences and information of early states but also provide late voters with valuable information under simultaneous elections voters equally weigh the available information but place too much weight on their priors providing an inappropriate advantage to front runners given these trade offs simultaneous elections are welfare preferred if the front runner initially has a small advantage but sequential elections are welfare preferred if the front runner initially has a large advantage we then quantitatively evaluate this trade off using data based on the 2004 presidential primary the results suggest that simultaneous systems outperform sequential systems although the difference in welfare is relatively small

optimal districting with endogenous party platforms representation is one of the most important criteria by which to judge electoral systems in this paper i focus on one aspect of representative democracy the formation of electoral district boundaries it is well known that majoritarian systems give rise to highly biased seat vote curves causing representation to be less than ideal what should therefore be the optimal constituency design when the objective is to maximize voters welfare i show that when parties take account of districting while setting platforms then the district design problem reduces to a very simple rule do nothing when voters are risk neutral and when voters are risk averse choose a bias that is against the largest partisan group calibrating the model on data of the u s state legislative elections during the 1990s i show that the welfare gain due to optimal districting is very small

campaign finance and voter welfare with entrenched incumbents two candidates compete for elective office each candidate has information she would like to reveal to the voters but this requires costly advertising the candidates can solicit contributions from interest groups to finance such advertising these contributions are secured by promises to perform favors for the contributors should the candidate win the election voters understand this and elect the candidate they like best taking into account their expectations about promises to special interests there is an incumbency advantage in fundraising which is sometimes so great that the incumbent faces no serious opposition at all introducing partial public financing through matching funds improves voter welfare in districts that have advertising under the decentralized system while it can reduce welfare in other districts the optimal policy must strike a balance between these two effects

using repeat challengers to estimate the effect of campaign spending on election outcomes in the u s house previous studies of congressional spending have typically found a large positive effect of challenger spending but little evidence for effects of incumbent spending those studies however do not adequately control for inherent differences in vote getting ability across candidates high quality challengers are likely to receive a high fraction of the vote and have high campaign expenditures even if campaign spending has no impact on election outcomes to avoid that bias this paper examines elections in which the same two candidates face one another on more than one occasion differencing eliminates the influence of any fixed candidate or district attributes estimates of the effects of challenger spending are an order of magnitude below those of previous studies campaign spending has an extremely small impact on election outcomes regardless of who does the spending campaign spending limits appear socially desirable but public financing of campaigns does not

interest groups campaign contributions and probabilistic voting this essay develops a simple model to analyze the impact of campaign contributions on electoral policy decisions of candidates for office interest groups here are firms that select contributions under the assumption that candidates policies and opposing groups donations remain unaltered candidates however recognize that their policy choices affect contributions campaign contributions are used by candidates to affect policy oriented voters perceptions of candidates positions in this framework the introduction of campaign contributions may affect candidates electoral policies and if they do then they benefit surely exactly one of the two interest groups

price and advertising signals of product quality we present a signaling model based on ideas of phillip nelson in which both the introductory price and the level of directly uninformative advertising or other dissipative marketing expenditures are choice variables and may be used as signals for the initially unobservable quality of a newly introduced experience good repeat purchases play a crucial role in our model a second focus of the paper is on illustrating an approach to refining the set of equilibria in signalling games with multiple potential signals

auctions vs bookbuilding and the control of underpricing in hot ipo markets market returns before the offer price is set affect the amount and variability of initial public offering ipo underpricing thus an important question is what ipo procedure is best adapted for controlling underpricing in hot versus cold market conditions the french stock market offers a unique arena for empirical research on this topic since three substantially different issuing mechanisms auctions bookbuilding and fixed price are used there using 1992 1998 data we find that the auction mechanism is associated with less underpricing and lower variance of underpricing we show that the auction procedure s ability to incorporate more information from recent market conditions into the ipo price is an important reason copyright 2003 oxford university press

campaign contributions as a commitment device we explore the idea that the influence of interest groups in elections may have positive economic effects since the investment decisions of firms determine economic growth and employment voters have a common interest in making their governments commit to policies that encourage private investments however governments may renege on promises for economic stability and choose excessively leftist policies campaign contributions by firms tend to restrain the scope for such opportunism and provide a commitment device this is achieved if firms after the policy is chosen contribute to the governing party or to its rivals

when the squeakiest wheel gets the most oil exploiting one s nuisance power abstract in this paper a lobby group or union may influence public policy because it is able via a costly signal such as a boycott or a strike to negatively impact the image of decision makers the competence of a government is measured by its ability to do a lot with only a little money voters receive through observing the level of public output only a noisy signal of government s quality so that the lobby groups which are better informed may transmit to them more precise information about it we show that when unions are unbiased i e have no hostility against or sympathy for the incumbent government strikes may occur only when the government is bad consequently a strike in this case acts as a clear though costly signal to the public of an incompetent government when some or all unions or lobby groups are biased against the incumbent government we show that the possibility of strikes may distort the budget allocation away from the efficient one bad governments have a tendency to favor their political enemies while good governments favor their political enemies only when they are not overly biased

the economic consequences of political donation limits the economic consequences of limits on political donations depend on the degree of political competition donors who are ideologically aligned with candidates decide how much to contribute to their own candidate they may benefit from rent seeking by their own candidate but dislike rent seeking by the opposition increased rent seeking by politicians thus generates campaign contributions for themselves but also mobilizes donations to the opposing candidate potentially to a greater extent this latter effect acts as a deterrent to rent seeking when contributions finance electoral campaigns and positively affect election chances when political competition is low incumbent donors outnumber opposition donors and limits reduce rent seeking when political competition is high donors are equalized and laissez faire reduces rent seeking consistent with these hypotheses data from the us states suggest that limits are associated with better policies and stronger growth performance at low levels of political competition whilst laissez faire is preferred when political competition is high

does negative advertising affect giving behavior evidence from campaign contributions abstract this paper contributes to a growing literature that explains why individuals contribute to political campaigns we build a panel dataset that follows contributors from primary to general elections to quantify the persistence of giving in political contests those who gave to winning candidates in the primary were most likely to contribute again in the general election next we use an instrumental variable strategy to document that within party negative advertising decreases the probability that individuals contribute to their preferred party in the general election regardless of whether they initially contributed to a winning or losing primary candidate

policy platforms campaign spending and voter participation abstract we model electoral competition between two parties in a winner take all election parties choose strategically first their platforms and then their campaign spending under aggregate uncertainty about voters preferences we use the model to examine why campaign spending in the united states has increased at the same time that politics has become more polarized we find that a popular explanation more accurate targeting of campaign spending is not consistent while accurate targeting may lead to greater spending it also leads to less polarization we argue that a better explanation is that voters preferences have become more volatile from the point of view of parties at the moment of choosing policy positions this both raises campaign spending and increases polarization it is also consistent with the observation that voters have become less committed to the two parties

valence characteristics costly policy and the median crossing property a diagrammatic exposition voters value valence characteristics such as honesty and competence in this paper we consider the situation where candidates may have more than one valence characteristic of importance to the voters at the same time we introduce a new concept the median crossing property which differs from single peakedness and is less restrictive than the single crossing property if indifference curves satisfy the median crossing property then voting is transitive and the majority s preference rankings coincide with those of the median voter if the indifference curves violate the median crossing property then intransitivity may arise the framework also allows us to consider elections with costly policy

campaign finance regulation with competing interest groups abstract regulatory caps on contributions to political campaigns are the cornerstones of campaign finance legislation in many established democracies and their introduction is considered by most emerging ones are these regulations desirable this paper studies contribution caps in a menu auction lobbying model with limited budgets and costly entry in the absence of entry contribution caps improve welfare by leveling the political playing field with entry however a competition effect and a bargaining effect may arise resulting in inefficient entry and exit decisions in particular a cap may lead to worse policies than the status quo and even if better policies are chosen the resulting gain in welfare may be more than offset by the entry costs regulation can also lead to the simultaneous entry of competing groups creating costly rent seeking on issues previously unaffected by lobbying

political competition with campaign contributions and informative advertising this paper presents a theory of political competition with campaign contributions and informative political advertising policy motivated parties compete by selecting candidates and interest groups provide contributions to enhance the electoral prospects of like minded candidates contributions are used to finance advertising campaigns that provide voters with information about candidates ideologies voters update their beliefs rationally given the information they have received the paper uses the theory to analyze the welfare economics of contribution limits such limits are shown to redistribute welfare from ordinary citizens to members of interest groups jel d72 h40

campaign advertising and voter welfare this paper investigates the role of campaign advertising and the opportunity of legal restrictions on it an electoral race is modeled as a signalling game with three classes of players many voters two candidates and one interest group the group has non verifiable insider information on the candidates quality and on the basis of this information offers a contribution to each candidate in exchange for a favorable policy position candidates spend the contributions they receive on non directly informative advertising this paper shows that 1 a separating equilibrium exists in which the group contributes to a candidate only if the insider information about that candidate is positive 2 although voters are fully rational a ban on campaign advertising can be welfare improving and 3 split contributions may arise in equilibrium and if they arise too often they are detrimental to voters

campaign advertising and election outcomes quasi natural experiment evidence from gubernatorial elections in brazil whether campaign advertising influences election outcomes is an open question a paradox given the amount spent on campaigning in general and tv advertising in particular we argue that such absence of documentation is due to the focus of the empirical literature on the u s where the allocation of campaign spending and advertising is decentralized we explore a quasi natural experiment that enables us to mitigate the omitted variables and reverse causality problems caused by decentralized allocation in brazil gubernatorial elections work in a two round system in the first round candidates tv time shares are determined by their coalitions share of seats in the national parliament in the second round tv time is split equally between the first round winner and runner up using differences between rounds as a source of variation we find a large causal effect of tv advertising on election outcomes

service induced campaign contributions and the electoral equilibrium candidates for office are modeled as promising services such as support for legislation and intervention in the bureaucracy to interest groups in exchange for campaign contributions an electoral equilibrium is characterized in which candidates choose service contribution offers and interest groups choose whether to contribute the model provides several explanations of congressional incumbents success in over 90 percent of their reelection contests a recognition advantage a high personal valuation of the office a lower cost of providing services and policy alignment with high demand interest groups the model yields predictions that are consistent with empirical findings on the relation between campaign contributions and election outcomes

asymmetric information and the electoral momentum of public opinion polls this paper demonstrates that the existence of public opinion polls amplifies the effects of shifts in the distribution of the public s preferences over the issue space on the election s results voters evaluate candidates by their positions on the issue space and by a valence or general ability dimension some individual s the informed have more precise information about the relative abilities of candidates than others the uninformed since public opinion polls reflect the information of the informed high approval for a candidate at the polls signals to the uninformed that he is more likely to be abler however high approval may also reflect changes in the distribution of the public on the issue space as a result the uninformed partly confuse the two effects and public opinion polls tend to reinforce the effects of shifts in the public s ideological preferences on election results a shift to the right that shows up as more support for the right wing candidate at the polls is partly interpreted as a higher efficiency of this candidate as a result he wins with a higher margin than the margin he would have won with in the absence of polls or under perfect information

contribution limits and transparency in a campaign finance experiment we experimentally compare electoral outcomes when donor contribution limits are varied the effect of contribution limits is studied under three levels of transparency one where donors preferences and donations are unobserved by the candidate and public one where they are observed by the candidate but not the public and one where they are observed by all we find that a combination of stricter contribution limits and full transparency is most successful at limiting donors influence on policy choice we also find that stricter contribution limits improve social welfare in some treatments we further find that the partial and no anonymity settings lead to centrist bias whereby implemented policies on average are more centrist than the candidate s preferences in most treatments

should we tax or cap political contributions a lobbying model with policy favors and access abstract this paper develops a model of political contributions in which a politician can either sell policy favors or sell access access allows interest groups to share hard information with the politician in support of their preferred policy here selling access maximizes policy utility while selling policy favors maximizes total contributions imposing a binding contribution limit makes it more likely that the politician sells access which can improve expected constituent welfare however a contribution limit distorts the signals associated with the contributions which tends to result in worse policy alternatively a tax on political contributions can ensure that the politician sells access without distorting his information therefore from the viewpoint of a representative constituent a tax on contributions is strictly preferred to a contribution limit or no reform the politician however may prefer regulation in the form of a contribution limit even when a tax is better for the constituent

private polling in elections and voter welfare we study elections in which two candidates poll voters about their preferred policies before taking policy positions in the essentially unique equilibrium candidates who receive moderate signals adopt more extreme platforms than their information suggests but candidates with more extreme signals may moderate their platforms policy convergence does not maximize voters welfare although candidates platforms diverge in equilibrium they do not do so as much as voters would like we find that the electorate always prefers less correlation in candidate signals and thus private over public polling some noise in the polling technology raises voters welfare

electoral competition with informed and uninformed voters i present a model of electoral competition in which candidates raise campaign contributions by choosing policies that benefit interest groups and then expend those contributions to influence voters who are uninformed about the policies informed voters however vote based on those policies so candidates face a trade off between choosing a policy to generate funds to attract the uninformed vote and choosing a policy to attract the informed vote electoral equilibria are characterized for two categories of policies particularistic and collective in the case of particularistic policies the equilibrium policies of the candidates are separated if the proportion of uninformed voters is sufficiently high and the degree of separation is an increasing function of that proportion the model is extended to include the public financing of elections and incumbency advantages for the case of collective policies the candidates locate at the median of the ideal points of the informed voters and contributions are zero

flip flopping from primaries to general elections abstract i consider a model in which candidates must win a primary election to compete in the general election candidates may choose different policies in the primary and the general election but doing so results in accusations of flip flopping i show that candidates adopt extreme policies in the primaries but then try to move closer to the center for the general election even though primary voters are forward looking and anticipate this policy moderation the extent to which candidates move closer to the center is constrained by flip flopping costs and candidates choose divergent policies in the general election i obtain comparative statics results on candidate policy choices in terms of voter preferences