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Money and Votes. Incumbents in Mayoral Elections in Chile

Author

Listed:
  • Renato Aguilar

    (Departamento de Economía, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de la República)

  • Claudio Parés

    (Departamento de Economía, Universidad de Concepción (Chile))

Abstract

Being an incumbent is an important advantage in an election. This issue has been discussed in numerous studies and has been formalized into the so called permanent campaign hypothesis. This means that the incumbents, during all the duration of their tenure, should be running a more or less intensive campaign. The tenure of the office, eventually disputed in the election, allows an elected officer to use some resources and opportunities that are no available for the other candidates. This study empirically explores this hypothesis for the mayoral election of 2012 in Chile, using a database covering all the Chilean municipalities. A central point is the money spent in the campaign by the incumbents in the mayoral election. We empirically study these issues with the help of a regression model for the campaign expenditures and the vote obtained by the incumbents. The estimation of this model is not trivial because we have two equations determining simultaneously the expenditures and the vote. Additionally, we had to consider that both variables are bounded and that we have a latent variable: the expected vote for 2012. We solved these problems using maximum likelihood truncated estimations and instrumental variables. Our results suggest that incumbent candidates plan their campaign expenditures based mostly in their expected vote. We also found empirical evidence suggesting that winners behave differently than losers.

Suggested Citation

  • Renato Aguilar & Claudio Parés, 2016. "Money and Votes. Incumbents in Mayoral Elections in Chile," Documentos de Trabajo (working papers) 1316, Department of Economics - dECON.
    • Handle: RePEc:ude:wpaper:1316
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    File URL: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12008/8431
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gerber, Alan, 1998. "Estimating the Effect of Campaign Spending on Senate Election Outcomes Using Instrumental Variables," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 92(2), pages 401-411, June.
    2. Thomas Stratmann, 2005. "Some talk: Money in politics. A (partial) review of the literature," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 124(1), pages 135-156, July.
    3. Levitt, Steven D, 1994. "Using Repeat Challengers to Estimate the Effect of Campaign Spending on Election Outcomes in the U.S. House," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 102(4), pages 777-798, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Incumbents; Mayoral Elections; Campaign Expenditures; Simultaneous Equations; Truncated Regressions;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D70 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - General
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • C34 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Truncated and Censored Models; Switching Regression Models

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