Political Competition with Campaign Contributions and Informative Advertising

Stephen Coate ()

No 8693, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper presents a model of political competition with campaign contributions and informative political advertising. Policy-motivated parties compete by selecting candidates and interest groups provide contributions to enhance the electoral prospects of like-minded candidates. Contributions are used to finance advertising campaigns that provide voters with information about candidates' ideologies. The model embodies rational behavior on the part of all actors, is analytically tractable, and has a unique equilibrium. The paper uses the model to analyze the welfare economics of contribution limits. Such limits are shown to redistribute welfare from moderate voters to interest group members. They may or may not raise aggregate welfare.

JEL-codes: D72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pub
Date: 2001-12
Note: PE
View list of references View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w8693.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html.

Related works:
Journal Article: Political Competition with Campaign Contributions and Informative Advertising (2004)
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: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:8693

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w8693
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc
Address: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by ().