Article

Electoral Endorsements and Campaign Contributions

Elena Panova

Abstract

This paper models information transmission in an electoral campaign. The voters have conflicting policy interests, but they are congruent in their desire to elect a competent politician. They hold private information about the candidates for office, and they use endorsements and campaign contributions to signal their information, so as to advertise their most preferred candidates. Endorsements are cheap talk, but campaign contributions are costly, hence, contributions are stronger signals than endorsements. Therefore, contributions help to transmit information when voter interests are relatively divergent (however, not so much that campaigning is useless).

Keywords

campaign contributions; cheap talk; burned money; incumbency advantage;

JEL codes

  • D72: Political Processes: Rent-Seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
  • D82: Asymmetric and Private Information • Mechanism Design

Reference

Elena Panova, Electoral Endorsements and Campaign Contributions, The B. E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy (Contributions), vol. 11, n. 1, February 2011.

Published in

The B. E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy (Contributions), vol. 11, n. 1, February 2011