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Published September 2000 | Published
Journal Article Open

Equilibrium in Campaign Spending Games: Theory and Data

Abstract

We present a formal game-theoretic model to explain the simultaneity problem that makes it difficult to obtain unbiased estimates of the effects of both incumbent and challenger spending in U.S. House elections. The model predicts a particular form of correlation between the expected closeness of the race and the level of spending by both candidates, which implies that the simultaneity problem should not be present in close races and should be progressively more severe in the range of safe races that are empirically observed. This is confirmed by comparing simple OLS regression of races that are expected to be close with races that are not, using House incumbent races spanning two decades.

Additional Information

© 2000 American Political Science Association. The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the National Science Foundation, grant numbers SES-9224787 and SES-9223868. We thank Jeffrey Banks, Jonathan Katz, D. Roderick Kiewiet, David Romero, four anonymous referees, and the APSR Editor for helpful comments.

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Created:
August 19, 2023
Modified:
October 17, 2023