Political Spending

Do war chests deter challengers? And if so, under what circumstances do they deter? An anecdote reveals one circumstance when war chests may deter.

Conventional wisdom states that incumbents possess resources that prevent quality candidates from challenging them. This is a potential problem because quality challengers are more likely to ...

This paper uses event study methodology to measure whether firms that gave soft money to political parties received excessively high rates of returns from their ...

This chapter first appeared in The Medium and the Message:  Television Advertising and American Elections, edited by Kenneth Goldstein and Patricia Strach (Englewood Cliffs, ...

Critics of American politics often say that spending on electoral campaigns harms our democracy and charge that the money goes for cynical, negative, and ...

McCain-style campaign finance regulation is the new campaign reality. But what exactly will this reformist utopia look like? Assessing the “reformed” campaign of the future against the stated ...

I n the 2000 race for the presidency, Arizona senator John McCain promoted campaign finance reform as a partial remedy for widespread citizen cynicism toward politics. On ...

Thirty years ago, Gordon Tullock posed a provocative puzzle: considering the value of public policies at stake and the reputed in°uence of campaign contributions in ...

In this article, Jay Goodliffe challenges conventional wisdom on the effect of war chests in U.S. House elections. As many "reformers" suggest that war ...

Proponents of new restrictions on campaign finance often argue that the United States spends too much money on campaigns and elections. That proposition is difficult to sustain ...