This paper examines the effects of campaign spending limits on political competition and incumbency advantage. We study a reform in Brazil that imposed limits on campaign spending for mayoral elections. These limits were implemented with a discontinuous kink which we exploit for causal...

Lecture on the first SFB/TR 15 meeting, Gummersbach, July, 18 - 20, 2004: This paper models the trade-off between production and appropriation in the presence of simultaneous inter- and intra-group conflicts. The model exhibits a ' group cohesion effect ': if the contest between the groups...

This paper models the trade-off between production and appropriation in the presence of simultaneous inter- and intra-group conflicts. The model exhibits a 'group cohesion effect': if the contest between the groups becomes more decisive, or contractual incompleteness between groups becomes more...

Research from various countries has shown that incumbents in legislative elections raise and spend more money when they face a tougher contest. A statistical analysis of Chilean candidates' campaign finance disclosures shows the opposite: an inverse relationship between incumbent spending and...

This article develops an empirical measure of electoral availability, i.e., the micro perspective of political competition. As existing research conceptualizes political competition mainly as a macro- or party-level phenomenon, the micro perspective remains underdeveloped and, therefore, an...