Campaign Finance Levels as Coordinating Signals in Three‐way, Experimental Elections

T. Reitz, Roger Myerson and Robert Weber ()

Economics and Politics, 1998, vol. 10, issue 3, 185-218

Abstract: If (often costly) election campaigns are simply advertising, they do not increase social welfare directly. Given this, should we limit campaign expenditures? We propose that costly campaigns can inform voters about the strength of candidates. This may increase welfare indirectly by helping voters avoid coordination failures. In laboratory elections, we study campaign finance levels as coordinating signals and compare them with our earlier work on polls. Both coordinate majority voters effectively, allowing them to stop Condorcet losers from winning. Finance levels were rational in that the total benefits of coordination exceeded the costs. Further, benefits of typical incremental contributions exceeded costs ex‐post, while the next typical increment's benefits would not have.

Date: 1998
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0343.00044

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:bla:ecopol:v:10:y:1998:i:3:p:185-218

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0954-1985

Access Statistics for this article

Economics and Politics is currently edited by Peter Rosendorff

More articles in Economics and Politics from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().