Greed as a Source of Polarization

Political contributions appear to be subject to an obvious public goods problem. Free riding might be expected to lead to polarization of contributions. We show that it is not true in general. In fact, in the most obvious model, with arbitrary number of candidates, we get a median contributor theorem. We then show how some polarization can be revived by adding some spending from campaign contributions on private consumption by the agent. We then use the model to analyze effects of campaign finance reforms including crackdowns on spending not directly on advertising.