The petit effect of campaign spending on votes. Using political financing reforms to measure spending impacts in multiparty elections

Abel François, Michael Visser () and Lionel Wilner
Additional contact information
Michael Visser: CREST - Centre de Recherche en Économie et Statistique - ENSAI - Ecole Nationale de la Statistique et de l'Analyse de l'Information [Bruz] - GENES - Groupe des Écoles Nationales d'Économie et Statistique - X - École polytechnique - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris - ENSAE Paris - École Nationale de la Statistique et de l'Administration Économique - GENES - Groupe des Écoles Nationales d'Économie et Statistique - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: This paper explores the relation between campaign spending and votes, in France, relying on political financing reforms as a quasi-natural experiment to assess if and how spending affects votes, for both incumbent and challenger candidates in multiparty legislative elections. The French reforms were adopted in the mid-1990s, modifying the fundraising rules in three important ways: (i) spending limits were reduced, (ii) legal entities no longer were allowed to fund candidates, and (iii) the maximal amount of candidates' personal campaign spending reimbursed by the State was raised. We study observations on two consecutive legislative elections, one before and one after the reforms. The difference in campaign expenses across elections turns out to be affected strongly by the reforms: candidates from the extreme parties (far-left and far-right) increased their expenditures substantially, while the candidates fielded by moderate parties reduced them considerably. Focusing on politicians running in both elections, we estimate the impact of spending using first-difference panel data methods and TSLS. Our instrumental variables for the difference in spending are constructed from the regulatory reforms. We find that spending by incumbents did not have statistically significant effects on their vote shares. Spending by challengers is statistically significant but the impact nevertheless is economically small.

Keywords: Campaign Spending Elections Political Financing Reforms. JEL-codes: C23 D72; Campaign Spending; Elections; Political Financing Reforms. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-01-05
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-03924628v1
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published in Public Choice, 2023, 192 (1-2), pp.29-57. ⟨10.1007/s11127-022-00970-w⟩

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-03924628v1/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The petit effect of campaign spending on votes: using political financing reforms to measure spending impacts in multiparty elections (2022)
Working Paper: The petit effect of campaign spending on votes: using political financing reforms to measure spending impacts in multiparty elections (2022)
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:hal:journl:hal-03924628

DOI: 10.1007/s11127-022-00970-w

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().