Laissez-faire in campaign finance

In this paper we analyze the impact of campaign contribution limits on government expenditures. The theory is based on the proclivity of geographic-based legislators to support wealth transfers from the polity at large to finance benefits for local constituents. It predicts that laissez-faire in contributions will lead to less government spending on budgetary redistribution and to a greater output of laws by the legislature. The theory is tested using data on U.S. State governments.     

Education finance reform: A dynamic perspective

We use a dynamic Tiebout model to analyze the consequences of moving from a pure local system of education finance to a pure state system of finance in which each student receives the same resources. While much of the education finance literature focuses on the static or immediate effects of such a change, our analysis also examines the dynamic effects. Numerical simulations for a calibrated version of our model indicate that these dynamic effects are very important. Comparing steady states, we find that aggregate welfare increases on the order of 10 percent following the switch to a state system. The key to this welfare gain is that a local system yields inefficiently low investment in human capital of children from low-income families.     

Campaign finance reform and electoral competition: Comment

Campaign finance regulation is an important issue for democracies. Proponents of stricter contribution limits believe it will improve competitiveness. Opponents argue that contribution caps are just a mask for incumbency protection. This paper comments on John Lott’s 2006 article in “Campaign Finance Reform and Electoral Competition” in Public Choice.     

The economics of political campaign finance: FECA and the puzzle of the not very greedy grandfathers

This paper introduces a structural model of campaign finance which permits estimation of the marginal costs of raising money as well as the marginal benefits of spending and saving money. The model is estimated for the 1986 through 1990 election cycles; the results demonstrate that the probability of retirement hinders an incumbent's ability to raise money and that incumbents willingly trade off electoral security for financial gain.     

The effects of campaign finance spending bans on electoral outcomes: Evidence from the states about the potential impact of Citizens United v. FEC

This paper seeks to understand the effect of campaign finance laws on electoral outcomes. Spurred by the recent Supreme Court decision, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010), which eliminated bans on corporate and union political spending, the study focuses on whether such bans generate electoral outcomes that are notably different from an electoral system that lacks such bans. We look to two key electoral dynamics that such bans might influence: the partisan balance of power and the success of incumbents. Using historical data on regulations in 49 American states between 1968 and 2009 we test alternative models for evaluating the impact of corporate spending bans put in place during this period. The results indicate that spending bans appear to have limited effects on election outcomes.     

Public finance management reforms in Somalia: a case study on Somalia's finance professionals

There is an unprecedented and pressing need for a major legislative public financial management reform in Somalia to bolster the technical and professional efforts of implementing a modern system of public financial management across the country. Currently, there is no independent auditing authority to enable citizens to access information on the use of public resources. However, the success of any reform depends on establishing strong public budgeting systems as well as developing strong public finance training programs and policy linkage on financial management policies and procedures.     

Elite-public interaction on twitter: EU issue expansion in the campaign

Why do some issues receive more interest from the public, while others do not? This paper develops a theoretical and empirical approach that explains the degree to which issues expand from the elite to the public. We examine how candidates in the 2014 European Parliament elections talked about EU issues, in comparison to other political issues. We rely on data collected from Twitter and use a combination of human coding and machine learning to analyse what facilitates interactions from the public. We find that most political actors did not try to engage with the public about EU issues, and lack of engagement results in less interactions from the general public. Our findings contribute to understanding why EU issues still play a secondary role in European politics, but at the same time highlight what low-cost communicational tools might be useful to overcome this expansion deficit.     

Counterterrorism strategies in the lab

We conduct experiments to test the collective action dilemmas associated with defensive and proactive counterterror strategies. Defensive policies are associated with creating public ??bads' (e.g., a commons) whereas proactive policies are akin to the voluntary provision of public goods. When combined, the inefficiency of collective action is exacerbated, resulting in a situation known as a Prisoner??s Dilemma squared (PD²). Deterministic versus probabilistic equivalent versions of the associated externalities are compared within a laboratory setting. Experimental results reveal that the collective action problem associated with counterterror strategies is deepened in uncertain environments, and is indeed a robust regularity that is not easily overcome; as individuals gain more experience, they become even more self-interested.     

Selling Hitler: propaganda and the Nazi brand

In this article we argue that Nazism functioned as a brand, and that this is key to our understanding of the extraordinary success of the Hitler regime in galvanising German public opinion. Nazis understood and manipulated the power of the brand, creating what amounts to a parallel universe of imagery and symbolism. The integuments of this brand strategy were the idea of Hitler himself and his projection, the stress on solidarity, the proclamation of a modernist Utopia with ancient accents, and the construction of an existential threat to the German way of life. But underpinning these were the deployment of what have become classic marketing concepts, such as targeting and segmentation, and a perceptive comprehension of the idea of packaging. Beyond this the regime was anchored in a kind of banality of ordinariness, it looked, at many levels, like a normal Western society and this element was made more credible by the promotion of a vigorous consumer culture. In many ways the Nazis were ahead of their time, masters of such political marketing arts as spin and rapid rebuttal. The fact that all this was done in the service of the most monstrous empire that was ever created, whose lasting legacy to the human race was its unique pictography of genocide, must alert us to the more sinister ends to which political marketing can be perverted. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The use of client surveys to gauge the threat of contamination in welfare reform experiments

This paper examines the type of evidence policy analysts have used to identify the presence and magnitude of contamination in welfare reform experiments. Peter Rossi's critique of the New Jersey Family Development Program evaluation motivates the following discussion. In this critique Rossi and others contend that client misperception about experimental control‐group assignment resulted in contamination that negates reported treatment effectiveness. By applying the framework of the Rubin Causal Model (RCM) to isolate “pure” and “impure” experimental and control cases, the actual group assignment and not self‐reported membership is shown to be a more accurate gauge of treatment level and effect. The analysis reveals that the form of contamination Rossi detected leads to underestimates of treatment effects, not their evaporation. While contamination is a legitimate threat in any research design its identification must be based on empirical measures. © 2003 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

News matters: Influences on the vote in the Danish 2000 euro referendum campaign

Abstract.  This study investigates how the information environment in the Danish 2000 euro referendum campaign served to crystallize opinion on the issue within the context of a number of other hypothesized influences on the vote, based on previous studies of referendum voting. Our data include a nationally representative two-wave panel survey and a content analysis of news coverage during the referendum campaign. We develop a weighted measure of exposure to news on public and private television channels, that takes into account the volume and tone of the coverage towards the YES and NO campaigns, and using this we find that exposure to public television news significantly influences vote choice when controlling for other predictors. We also find varied levels of support for hypotheses concerning the influence of other key variables such as ideology, economic evaluations, government approval and issue-specific contextual variables. The findings emphasize the importance of considering the information environment during referendum campaigns.     

Support for electoral system reform among voters and politicians: Studying information effects through survey experiments

Does information about the consequences of proposals to change the Norwegian parliamentary electoral system influence voters' and politicians' attitudes towards the system? Is the willingness to accept change greater among voters/politicians who “lose” under the present electoral system? These questions are illuminated using empirical data from two identical survey experiments, with responses from both voters and politicians about 1) increased proportionality between parties (more seats for smaller parties) and 2) increased geographical proportionality (stronger representation for the more populous counties). The results show that being informed about the consequences of the proposals has a major effect on voters' and politicians' attitudes. This applies especially to the question of increased proportionality between parties, where feedback was particularly negative from respondents who were told that the proposal might weaken the larger parties’ representation and make it more difficult to establish viable governments. The responses to the question about increased proportionality between parties were also influenced by partisanship; politicians who belonged to or voters who voted for one of the smaller parties favour increased proportionality. We also find that there is limited support for the proposal to distribute parliamentary seats according to the number of inhabitants in the counties, and this support is further reduced when the respondents are informed that the measure will increase representation from the more populous parts of the country.     

Feeding finance: a critical account of the shifting relationships between finance,food and farming

Abstract

Whether in the form of commodity index funds, farmland investment funds or commodities trading by agri-food companies, there is evidence of an increasingly close relationship between finance, food and agriculture. While these developments have received some critical attention of late, existing accounts of the ‘financialization of food’ are limited to the extent that they view finance as an external force with emphasis placed on the unnaturalness of its relationship with agriculture and its distortive effects on agricultural markets. Recognizing that finance and agriculture have a long history, this paper offers a more nuanced account of the place of financialization in the agricultural sector. Specifically, it examines how agriculture's emergence as an investment opportunity has reconfigured the terrain of agricultural interests and logics while creating new knowledge demands and agricultural visibilities. These dynamics are explored through a case study of the role of finance and processes of financialization in the recent demise of the Canadian Wheat Board as a state marketing agency. Through this discussion, the paper offers valuable insights into not only the reworking of agriculture as a particular type of financial space, but also the nature and limits of financialization itself as a way of engaging with the world beyond urban financial centres.     

Campaign styles: Persistency in campaign resource allocation

How do candidates allocate their campaign resources and when do they change their allocations? Using data of over 3.5 million expenditure items submitted by candidates who ran for House seats between 2004 through 2014, we provide a detailed picture of how candidates allocate their limited resources among different categories of activities. Although different candidates running in the same race allocated their campaign resource differently, in the aggregate, monthly expenditure patterns over the course of the campaign period across six election cycles are similar. Also, from one cycle to the next, candidates rarely changed their campaign resource allocations, even when they face varying qualities of challengers, different sets of voters due to redistricting, and increases in outside spending after Citizens United. This suggests that candidates’ expenditure decisions are sticky across election cycles. We show additional evidence of this persistency by documenting repeated contractual relationship with the same consultants and campaign vendors by campaigns.     

Presidential campaign expenditures: Evidence on allocations and effects

This paper analyzes the impact of presidential campaign spending on election results. Analyses of expenditures and voting are often plagued by simultaneity between campaign spending and expected vote share. However, game-theoretic models of resource-allocation decisions made by a central actor (i.e., a presidential campaign) suggest that candidates will spend more in close races and in races likely to be pivotal. We provide empirical support for this theory; using Federal Communications Commission data from the 1972 presidential election, we find that expenditures were higher in states where the election was expected to be closer and in states likely to be pivotal. We use these two factors as instruments in a two-stage least squares model to estimate the effect of spending on votes. We find that, contrary to previous theory and research, presidential campaign spending significantly increases a candidate's vote share.