Information affecting a candidate's reputation might have significant electoral consequences. Do candidates respond to the release of information? Using Brazilian elections and audits as an exogenous source of information, I show that both incumbent and challenger increase their campaign...

Information affecting a candidate's reputation might have significant electoral consequences. Do candidates respond to the release of information? Using Brazilian elections and audits as an exogenous source of information, I show that both incumbent and challenger increase their campaign...

Information affecting a candidate's reputation might have significant electoral consequences. Do candidates respond to the release of information? Using Brazilian elections and audits as an exogenous source of information, I show that both incumbent and challenger increase their campaign...

We study the informational effectiveness of electoral campaigns. Voters may not think about all political issues and have incomplete information with regard to political positions of candidates. Nevertheless, we show that if candidates are allowed to microtarget voters with messages then...

We consider campaign competition in which candidates compete for votes among a continuum of voters by engaging in persuasive efforts that are targetable. Each individual voter is persuaded by campaign effort and votes for the candidate who targets more persuasive effort to this voter. Each...

We study a model of elections in non-majoritarian systems that captures the link between competition in policies and competition in campaign spending. We argue that the overall competitiveness of the political arena depends both on the endogenous number of parties contesting the election and the...

Can campaign communications credibly transmit information about candidates' policy intentions? To answer this question, I develop and analyze a game-theoretic model of campaign communication in a two-candidate majority rule election with multidimensional policies. Candidate and voter preferences...

To the extent that election campaigns are simply advertising campaigns, they should not contribute directly to social welfare. Yet election campaigns are often very costly. Why do such costly campaigns arise as the norm? If they do not benefit society, should campaign expenditures be limited?...

If (often costly) election campaigns are simply advertising, they do not increase social welfare directly. Given this, should we limit campaign expenditures? We propose that costly campaigns can inform voters about the strength of candidates. This may increase welfare indirectly by helping...

This paper examines the relationship between democratic institutions and domestic crime. We model the motivation for inciting crime in a two party setting and show that investment in con ictual campaigning is higher in economies characterized by weak institutions. We then test this prediction on...