Title: Vote-buying and reciprocity
Description: "While vote-buying is common, little is known about how politicians determine who to target.  We argue that vote-buying can be sustained by an internalized norm of reciprocity.  Receiving money engenders feelings of obligation.  Combining survey data on vote-buying with an experiment-based measure of reciprocity, we show that politicians target reciprocal individuals.  Overall, our findings highlight the importance of social preferences in determining political behavior"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site.