Negative Campaigning in a Probabilistic Voting Model
Jan Brueckner and
Kangoh Lee
No 4233, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo
Abstract:
This paper extends the small existing theoretical literature on negative campaigning, building on work by Harrington and Hess (1996). While their analysis explores the determinants of negative campaign spending using a classic spatial voting model, this paper relies instead on a probabilistic voting model, extending the use of this popular model to a new setting. By using two different versions of the model based on different assumptions on the targeting of campaign spending, the paper generates a host of results. However, the main lesson, which emerges in fairly robust fashion regardless of specific assumptions, is that negative campaign spending is higher for the relatively centrist candidate. The more-extreme candidate in the electoral contest devotes, by contrast, comparatively more of her funds to positive campaign spending. This result, which at first appears unrelated to the main findings of Harrington and Hess (1996) and Chakrabarti’s (2007) extension of their model, is actually consistent with their results upon deeper examination.
Keywords: negative campaigning; probabilistic voting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D70 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp4233.pdf (application/pdf)
Related works:
Journal Article: Negative campaigning in a probabilistic voting model (2015) 
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:ces:ceswps:_4233
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Klaus Wohlrabe ().