IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ver/wpaper/05-2015.html

Electoral Contributions and the Cost of Unpopularity

Author

Listed:
  • Thomas Bassetti

    (University of Padova)

  • Filippo Pavesi

    (Department of Economics (University of Verona))

Abstract

When considering contributions to electoral campaigns in the U.S., the data reveals that total contributions within industries tend to vary signifcantly over time. To explain this evidence, we present a model in which interest groups finance politicians that require funding for campaign advertising in exchange for policy favors. Our model predicts that interest groups related to industries that experience a rise (decline) in popularity will reduce (increase) the amount of resources devoted to campaign financing. Intuitively, an industry that suffers from a loss of popularity will face greater costs of obtaining policy favors, since it must provide candidates with greater contributions for campaign advertising, in order to compensate for its decline in reputation. The empirical analysis, based on U.S. House elections between 2000 and 2004, strongly supports this finding.

Suggested Citation

  • Thomas Bassetti & Filippo Pavesi, 2015. "Electoral Contributions and the Cost of Unpopularity," Working Papers 05/2015, University of Verona, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:ver:wpaper:05/2015
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dse.univr.it/home/workingpapers/wp2015n5.pdf
    File Function: First version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • P16 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Capitalist Institutions; Welfare State

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ver:wpaper:05/2015. 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: Michael Reiter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/isverit.html .

    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.