Do campaign spending limits diminish competition? An experiment

Hironori Otsubo

Economics Bulletin, 2013, vol. 33, issue 3, 2223-2234

Abstract: This paper experimentally investigates the effect of limits on campaign expenditure and outcome in an electoral contest where two candidates, an incumbent and a challenger, compete for office in terms of the amount of campaign expenditure. The candidates are asymmetric only in that the incumbent wins the contest in case of a tie. Theory predicts that in the presence of such asymmetry spending limits put the challenger at a disadvantage and tightening the limits leads to further entrenchment of the incumbent. The experimental results confirmed the theoretical predictions.

Keywords: Electoral contest; Spending limit; Incumbency advantage; Experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C7 C9 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-09-03
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.accessecon.com/Pubs/EB/2013/Volume33/EB-13-V33-I3-P207.pdf (application/pdf)

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:ebl:ecbull:eb-13-00500

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Economics Bulletin from AccessEcon
Bibliographic data for series maintained by John P. Conley ().