Selling Favors in the Lab: Experiments on Campaign Finance Reform

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Selling Favors in the Lab Experiments on
Campaign Finance Reform

• Daniel Houser
• Thomas Stratmann
• George Mason University
• October, 2005

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Purpose

• Use experiments with human subjects to
  investigate the political-economic implications
  of various campaign finance policies.
• Characterize how voter decisions are affected by
  advertising in different campaign finance
  regimes.
• Shed light on validity of various campaign
  finance models, particularly Coate (2004).

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Experiment Design

• Incorporates the salient features of Coate (2004)
• Power hungry candidates of high or low quality,
  candidates always want to be elected.
• Only swing voters included, and they dont know
  candidate quality.
• Ads are truthful and costly. Ads can be financed
  by special interests or the public.
• Electing a candidate who advertised using special
  interest money is costly to voters.

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Screen Candidates See During Campaign
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Screen Voters See During Campaign
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Voting Screen
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Data

• We report data from eight sessions, each
  including 24-26 unique subjects.
• Each session included between 8 and 15 campaigns
  with two unique, randomly selected candidates for
  each campaign.
• Total of 2,509 observations on 194 subjects.
• We draw inferences using panel data procedures
  that account for both session and individual
  effects.

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Voting Equation

• Probability that a randomly selected voter will
  vote for the R candidate is

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Results
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Results
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Results
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Results
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Results
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Results
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Results
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Results
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Conclusion

• Voters are sophisticated they update (respond
  to advertising) differently in different campaign
  finance environments, and in a way that is
  consistent with theory.
• The results inform efficient design of campaign
  finance policy.