IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/pubcho/v122y2005i3p467-482.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Elections with contribution-maximizing candidates

Author

Listed:
  • Amihai Glazer
  • Mark Gradstein

Abstract

Analyses of campaign contributions usually follow the Downsian model to suppose that candidates seek contributions to win elections. This paper takes the opposite approach, by assuming that each candidate aims to maximize the contributions he collects. A citizen contributes to a candidate with the aim of increasing that candidate’s chances of winning. These assumptions generate several results: in equilibrium citizens make campaign contributions; the positions the candidates adopt differ; because the rich are willing to make larger contributions than the poor, the candidates adopt positions the rich prefer. A cap on political contributions reduces spending by voters and reduces the distance between the positions adopted by the candidates; public funding of campaign contributions causes aggregate spending to increase. Copyright Springer Science + Business Media, Inc. 2005

Suggested Citation

  • Amihai Glazer & Mark Gradstein, 2005. "Elections with contribution-maximizing candidates," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 122(3), pages 467-482, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:122:y:2005:i:3:p:467-482
    DOI: 10.1007/s11127-005-7519-9
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11127-005-7519-9
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11127-005-7519-9?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ignacio Ortuno‐Ortín & Christian Schultz, 2005. "Public Funding of Political Parties," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 7(5), pages 781-791, December.
    2. Stephen D. Levitt, 1998. "Are PACs Trying to Influence Politicians or Voters?," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 10(1), pages 19-35, March.
    3. Andrea Prat, 2002. "Campaign Advertising and Voter Welfare," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 69(4), pages 999-1017.
    4. Milyo, Jeffrey & Primo, David & Groseclose, Timothy, 2000. "Corporate PAC Campaign Contributions in Perspective," Business and Politics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 2(1), pages 75-88, April.
    5. Stephen Coate, 2004. "Political Competition with Campaign Contributions and Informative Advertising," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 2(5), pages 772-804, September.
    6. Alesina, Alberto & Rosenthal, Howard, 1996. "A Theory of Divided Government," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 64(6), pages 1311-1341, November.
    7. Chappell, Henry W, Jr, 1982. "Campaign Contributions and Congressional Voting: A Simultaneous Probit-Tobit Model," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 64(1), pages 77-83, February.
    8. Jeffrey Milyo, 1997. "The economics of political campaign finance: FECA and the puzzle of the not very greedy grandfathers," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 93(3), pages 245-270, December.
    9. Baron, David P., 1994. "Electoral Competition with Informed and Uninformed Voters," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 88(1), pages 33-47, March.
    10. Alesina, Alberto & Rosenthal, Howard, 2000. "Polarized platforms and moderate policies with checks and balances," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(1), pages 1-20, January.
    11. Wittman, Donald, 1977. "Candidates with policy preferences: A dynamic model," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 180-189, February.
    12. Gene M. Grossman & Elhanan Helpman, 1996. "Electoral Competition and Special Interest Politics," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 63(2), pages 265-286.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Daisuke Hirata & Yuichiro Kamada, 2020. "Extreme donors and policy convergence," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 55(1), pages 149-176, June.
    2. Hirata, Daisuke & 平田, 大祐 & Kamada, Yuichiro & 鎌田, 雄一郎, 2019. "Extreme Lobbyists and Policy Convergence," Discussion Papers 2019-02, Graduate School of Economics, Hitotsubashi University.
    3. Markus LANG & Alexander RATHKE & Marco RUNKEL, 2010. "The Economic Consequences Of Foreigner Rules In National Sports Leagues," Region et Developpement, Region et Developpement, LEAD, Universite du Sud - Toulon Var, vol. 31, pages 47-64.
    4. Timothy Lambie-Hanson, 2013. "Campaign contributions as valence," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 157(1), pages 3-24, October.
    5. Shiou Shieh & Wan-Hsiang Pan, 2010. "Individual campaign contributions in a Downsian model: expressive and instrumental motives," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 145(3), pages 405-416, December.
    6. Zudenkova, Galina, 2010. "Sincere Lobby Formation," Working Papers 2072/151545, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Department of Economics.
    7. Jenny De Freitas, 2011. "Political Support for a Private System of Financing Political Campaigns," FinanzArchiv: Public Finance Analysis, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 67(4), pages 352-377, December.
    8. Jenny De Freitas, 2009. "Political support for the private system to finance political parties," DEA Working Papers 35, Universitat de les Illes Balears, Departament d'Economía Aplicada.
    9. Konrad, Kai A., 2007. "Strategy in contests: an introduction [Strategie in Turnieren – eine Einführung]," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Market Processes and Governance SP II 2007-01, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    10. Zudenkova Galina, 2017. "Lobbying as a Guard against Extremism," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 17(1), pages 1-17, January.
    11. Helmut Dietl & Egon Franck & Martin Grossmann & Markus Lang, 2009. "Contest Theory and its Applications in Sports," Working Papers 0105, University of Zurich, Institute for Strategy and Business Economics (ISU).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mazza, Isidoro & van Winden, Frans, 2008. "An endogenous policy model of hierarchical government," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 52(1), pages 133-149, January.
    2. Bruno Carvalho, 2021. "Campaign Spending in Local Elections: the Effects of Public Funding," Working Papers ECARES 2021-30, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    3. Cotton, Christopher, 2012. "Pay-to-play politics: Informational lobbying and contribution limits when money buys access," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(3), pages 369-386.
    4. Prato, Carlo & Wolton, Stephane, 2018. "Rational ignorance, populism, and reform," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 119-135.
    5. Christoph Vanberg, 2004. "Funding Asymmetries in Electoral Competition: How important is a level playing field?," Public Economics 0402002, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Julia Cage & Yasmine Bekkouche, 2018. "The Price of a Vote: Evidence from France, 1993-2014," Working Papers hal-03393149, HAL.
    7. Bekkouche, Yasmine & Cagé, Julia & Dewitte, Edgard, 2022. "The heterogeneous price of a vote: Evidence from multiparty systems, 1993–2017," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 206(C).
    8. Wittman, Donald, 2007. "Candidate quality, pressure group endorsements and the nature of political advertising," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 360-378, June.
    9. Stephen Coate, 2003. "Power-hungry Candidates, Policy Favors, and Pareto Improving Campaign Finance Policy," NBER Working Papers 9601, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Bekkouche, Yasmine & Cagé, Julia & Dewitte, Edgard, 2022. "The heterogeneous price of a vote: Evidence from multiparty systems, 1993–2017," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 206(C).
    11. Yasmine Bekkouche & Julia Cage, 2019. "The Heterogeneous Price of a Vote: Evidence from France, 1993-2014," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-03393084, HAL.
    12. repec:spo:wpecon:info:hdl:2441/2ahul47tb09rvqfl9eelv7o5ca is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Christoph Vanberg, 2005. "“One Man, One Dollar”? Examining the equalization argument in support of campaign contribution limits," Public Economics 0512001, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Julia Cage & Yasmine Bekkouche, 2018. "The Price of a Vote: Evidence from France, 1993-2014," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-03393149, HAL.
    15. Humberto Llavador, 2006. "Electoral Platforms, Implemented Policies, and Abstention," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 27(1), pages 55-81, August.
    16. Prato, Carlo & Wolton, Stephane, 2013. "Rational Ignorance, Elections, and Reform," MPRA Paper 68638, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 10 Dec 2015.
    17. Yasmine Bekkouche & Julia Cage & Edgard Dewitte, 2022. "The Heterogeneous Price of a Vote: Evidence from Multiparty Systems, 1993-2017," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-03389172, HAL.
    18. Satoshi Kasamatsu & Daiki Kishishita, 2022. "Informative campaigning in multidimensional politics: The role of naïve voters," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 34(1), pages 78-106, January.
    19. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/7rcgbs4v788terphdvb6a5e8t8 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/10lirmbd5p8h4ae52oi51b4cka is not listed on IDEAS
    21. Hideo Konishi & Chen-Yu Pan, 2020. "Silent promotion of agendas: campaign contributions and ideological polarization," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 182(1), pages 93-117, January.
    22. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/2ahul47tb09rvqfl9eelv7o5ca is not listed on IDEAS
    23. Thomas Stratmann, 2003. "Tainted Money? Contribution Limits and the Effectiveness of Campaign Spending," CESifo Working Paper Series 1044, CESifo.
    24. Cagé, Julia & Bekkouche, Yasmine, 2018. "The Heterogeneous Price of a Vote: Evidence from France, 1993-2014," CEPR Discussion Papers 12614, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:122:y:2005:i:3:p:467-482. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.