What explains significant variation across countries in the use of vote buying instead of campaign promises to secure voter support? This paper explicitly models the tradeoff parties face between engaging in vote buying and making campaign promises, and explores the distributional consequences...

Results from a new experiment shed light on the effects of voter information on vote buying and incumbent advantage. The treatment provided voters with information about a major spending program and the proposed allocations and promises of mayoral candidates just prior to municipal elections. It...