The effects of public campaign funding: Evidence from Seattle’s Democracy Voucher program

Alan Griffith and Thomas Noonen

Journal of Public Economics, 2022, vol. 211, issue C

Abstract: During each election cycle, the city of Seattle distributes four $25 vouchers to every registered voter, which may be donated to and redeemed by campaigns for city office. Through a difference-in-differences research design, we study the causal effect of Seattle’s program on various outcomes in city council elections in the first two cycles after implementation, with comparison cities drawn from large cities in Washington and California. We find a 53% increase in total contributions and a 350% increase in number of unique donors; these effects are largely explained by large increases in small donations, defined as contributions less than $200. We find statistically insignificant evidence of decreases in private donations, although our point estimates suggest moderate-to-substantial crowd-out ratios. We further estimate a highly significant 86% increase in number of candidates coupled with substantial decreases in incumbent electoral success. These results provide some of the first causal evidence of the effect of decentralized public campaign finance schemes, while speaking to the impacts of campaign regulation more generally on donation activity, candidate entry, and incumbency advantage.

Keywords: Public funding; Crowd out; Electoral competition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272722000780
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:pubeco:v:211:y:2022:i:c:s0047272722000780

DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2022.104676

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Public Economics is currently edited by R. Boadway and J. Poterba

More articles in Journal of Public Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().