Estimating how campaign advertising affects contributions is a challenging problem. Urban and Niebler (2014) address this question by focusing on “spillover” zipcodes — zipcodes in non-competitive states which receive Presidential campaign ads because they share a media market with a...

Do donor-funded politicians benefit their donors disproportionately? If so, how? This paper examines the impact of electing donor-funded politicians using a novel dataset that uniquely links campaign donors with recipients of public contracts during mayors' incumbency period in Colombia. Using a...

The article discusses the peculiarities of building political communications based on the material of official Twitter accounts of Petro Poroshenko and Volodymyr Zelensky as candidates for the President of Ukraine from 31.03 to 21.04.2019. Today's politicians are actively leveraging the positive...

In an age of dark money – the anonymous political spending facilitated by gaps in our campaign finance disclosure laws after Citizens United – the Supreme Court's campaign finance disclosure jurisprudence may be on a collision course with campaign finance disclosure laws. The collision can...

We examine whether representatives are more likely to serve long-term campaign donors instead of constituents during times of low media attention to politics. Based on 425 roll calls between 2005 and 2014 in the US House of Representatives, we show that representatives are more likely to vote...

Negative advertising is frequent in electoral campaigns, despite its ambiguous effectiveness: negativity may reduce voters' evaluation of the targeted politician but have a backlash effect for the attacker. We study the effect of negative advertising in electoral races with more than two...

This paper examines the effect of campaign visits in the context of the unique onesided nationwide speaking tour by a US Presidential candidate. During the 1896 election, the Democratic candidate went on a whistle stop train tour, while the Republican followed a frontporch campaign. To identify...

Using campaign contributions to measure CEO's political connections, we find that a one standard deviation increase in political connections is associated with a 9% increase in CEOs' annual compensation and a 17% decrease in his pay-performance sensitivity. Political rents increase with the...

Despite the well-documented benefits of political participation, few firms engage in politics. We argue that low levels of corporate political participation can be rationalized by financial incentives of employees and shareholders who are the ultimate source of corporate contributions. Since...

Introduction -- Money as Communication -- Politicization of Campaign Fundraising: A History -- Democratic Fundraising 2020 Presidential Primary -- Self-Funding in 2020 -- Republican Fundraising 2020 Presidential Primary -- Biden Fundraising Post Convention -- Trump Fundraising Post Convention --...

Introduction -- The regulation of advertising -- The volume and content of political advertising -- The challenge of online advertising -- How ads are created and tested -- Buying and targeting political advertising on television -- Studying the persuasive effects of advertising -- Beyond...

This paper investigates the effects of campaign finance rules on electoral outcomes. In French departmental and municipal elections, candidates competing in districts above 9,000 inhabitants face spending limits and are eligible for public reimbursement if they obtain more than five percent of...

The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 addressed two issues, soft money and independent expenditures on issue ads for electoral advocacy. The Supreme Court initially upheld most provisions in 2003 but subsequently weakened and struck down provisions on independent expenditures. I examine the...

We assess the influence of moneyed interests on legislative decisions. Our theory predicts that the vote outcome distribution and donation flows in a legislature feature a discontinuity at the approval threshold of bills if special interest groups are involved in vote buying. Testing the...

Pork-barrel spending is the use of federal money for localized projects that yield only a narrow geographic benefit. It is a commonly held belief that politicians use this spending to improve their chances of re-election. One way that an incumbent can increase their chances of re-election is...

We assess the influence of moneyed interests on legislative decisions. Our theory predicts that the vote outcome distribution and donation flows in a legislature feature a discontinuity at the approval threshold of bills if special interest groups are involved in vote buying. Testing the...

The Prosecutors and Politics Project has compiled a database that identifies who contributed to prosecutor elections and the amount of their donations. Campaign contribution information is often publicly available, but the format of that information varies from state to state, the information is...

Electoral competition is essential to democracy. Yet the incumbency rate in state-house legislative campaigns is nearly 95 percent. This report examines campaign contribution limits and the impact limits can have on electoral competition. The research on which this report is based was inspired...

I develop a formal model of political campaigns in which candidates choose how to distribute their resources over two different policy issues. I assume that campaigning on an issue has two simultaneous effects, both rooted in social and cognitive psychology: It increases the perceived quality of...

This paper utilizes six-year Senate terms and two-year reporting periods to analyze if Political Action Committees are using their donations to influence the actions of sitting Senators as opposed to simply trying to get those with favorable policy views re-elected. Senators that are early in...

In India the Primary Agricultural Cooperative Societies (PACS) are the base level institutions on which the entire cooperative edifice is built. Though the PACS in Tamil Nadu could provide around 20 loan products, 5 marketing services, and host of other services which includes running Fair Price...

We propose a formal model of small campaign contributions driven by an electoral motive, that is, by the possible influence of contributions on the outcome of an election. Electoral considerations produce strategic interactions among contributors, even when each donor takes as given the actions...

We combine a new dataset of weekly Catholic church donations with a new dataset of presidential-election campaign stops to explore the impact of stops on donations. We find that stops increase donations, with a campaign stop generating 2 percent more donations in the following week. Our results...

What are the political consequences of the diffusion of broadband internet? We address this question by studying the 2008 US presidential election, the first political campaign where the internet played a key role. Drawing on data from the FEC and the FCC, we provide robust evidence that...

Influential theories indicate concern that campaign donors exert outsized political influence. However, little data documents what donors actually want from government; and existing research largely neglects donors' views on individual issues. We argue there should be significant heterogeneity...

Asymmetric information between voters and legislative representatives poses a major challenge to the functioning of representative democracy. We examine whether representatives are more likely to serve long-term campaign donors instead of constituents during times of low media attention to...

We propose a theory of small campaign contributions driven by an electoral motive, i.e., the desire to influence election outcomes. Though small donors take as given the actions of others, strategic interactions induce patterns consistent with empirical findings, e.g., election closeness and...

How does electoral manipulation affect elected officials' willingness to satisfy their constituents? Although the literature has highlighted the role of elections as mechanisms of accountability, we do not know how elections whose integrity is compromised influence elected officials' actions in...

We combine a new dataset of weekly Catholic church donations with a new dataset of presidential-election campaign stops to explore the impact of stops on donations. We find that stops increase donations, with a campaign stop generating 2 percent more donations in the following week. Our results...