Does Campaign Spending Work?

Does Campaign Spending Work? Field Experiments Provide Evidence and Suggest New Theory

This article reports the results of several field experiments designed to measure campaign effects in partisan contests. The findings suggest incumbent campaigns failed to increase incumbent vote share, whereas the challenger campaign was effective. To understand these and other results, the incumbent’s optimal spending strategy was analyzed theoretically. The analysis reveals that if incumbent...

Policy Platforms , Campaign Spending Andvoter

Optimal Campaign Spending in Elections

We present a theory of campaign spending in elections. In our model we show that in the absence of competitive electoral pressure the timing of campaign spending will simply on the relative benefits of spending money early vs. late in the campaign. When the candidate have to compete for funds, and their ability to raise funds depends on their standing in the polls, candidates are forced to incr...

The Benefits of Campaign Spending

Campaign Spending Limits, Incumbent Spending, and Election Outcomes

We study the impact of campaign spending limits for candidates in Canadian federal elections. We first demonstrate that spending limits are binding mostly for incumbent candidates. We then use this information to produce endogeneity-corrected estimates for the impact of incumbent spending on electoral vote shares. Furthermore, we examine the impact of spending limits on broader measures of elec...