IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/ajagec/v108y2026i2p630-664.html

Resource windfalls and political sabotage: Evidence from 5.2 million political ads

Author

Listed:
  • David Lagziel
  • Ehud Lehrer
  • Ohad Raveh

Abstract

We study the role of incentives in inducing sabotage in political contents, vis‐à‐vis natural resource windfalls. The latter induce plausibly exogenous increases in contests' stakes by extending opportunities for policy implementation or private gain upon winning and enhancing incumbent advantage. A model of political contests with endogenous sabotage indicates that higher stakes increase sabotage in political campaigns. We validate these predictions using over 5 million TV ads from United States gubernatorial elections (2010–2020), leveraging plausibly exogenous variations in states' natural resource endowments. Results show that resource windfalls significantly escalate negative campaigning: A standard deviation increase in resource windfalls leads to a 10% rise in campaign negativity. We show that this effect is primarily fueled by corruption and observed most strongly in symmetric, more competitive environments.

Suggested Citation

  • David Lagziel & Ehud Lehrer & Ohad Raveh, 2026. "Resource windfalls and political sabotage: Evidence from 5.2 million political ads," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 108(2), pages 630-664, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:ajagec:v:108:y:2026:i:2:p:630-664
    DOI: 10.1111/ajae.12551
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/ajae.12551
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/ajae.12551?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • Q32 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Nonrenewable Resources and Conservation - - - Exhaustible Resources and Economic Development
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • P18 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Energy; Environment

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:ajagec:v:108:y:2026:i:2:p:630-664. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1111/(ISSN)1467-8276 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.