Is vote buying effective? Evidence from a field experiment in West Africa

Economic Journal

Volumn 124, Issue 574, 2014, Pages

  Vicente, Pedro C ^a  

^a UNIVERSIDADE NOVA DE LISBOA   (Portugal)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84894379975     PISSN: 00130133     EISSN: 14680297     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/ecoj.12086     Document Type: Article

References (41)

1. Acemoglu, D. and Robinson, J.A. (2001). 'Inefficient redistribution', American Political Science Review, vol. 95(3), pp. 649-61.
2. Becker, G.S. (1983). 'A theory of competition among pressure groups for political influence', Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 98(3), pp. 371-400.
3. Bertrand, M., Duflo, E. and Mullainathan, S. (2004). 'How much should we trust differences-in-differences estimates?', Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 119(1), pp. 249-75.
4. Besley, T. (2006). Principled Agents? The Political Economy of Good Government, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
5. Brusco, V., Nazareno, M. and Stokes, S.C. (2004). 'Vote-buying in Argentina', Latin American Research Review, vol. 39(2), pp. 66-88.
6. Cameron, A.C., Gelbach, J. and Miller, D. (2008). 'Bootstrap-based improvements for inference with clustered errors', Review of Economics and Statistics, vol. 90(3), pp. 414-27.
7. Coate, S. and Morris, S. (1995). 'On the form of transfers to special interests', Journal of Political Economy, vol. 103(6), pp. 1210-35.
8. Collier, P. and Hoeffler, A. (2009). 'Democracy's Achilles heel or, how to win an election without really trying', mimeo.
9. Collier, P. and Vicente, P.C. (2012). 'Violence, fraud, and bribery: the political economy of elections in Sub-Saharan Africa', Public Choice, vol. 153(1-2), pp. 117-47.
10. Collier, P. and Vicente, P.C. (2014). 'Votes and violence: evidence from a field experiment in Nigeria', Economic Journal, vol. 124(574), pp. F327-55.
11. Converse, P.E. (1972). 'Change in the American electorate', in (A. Campbell and P.E. Converse, eds.), The Human Meaning of Social Change, pp. 263-337, New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
12. Cox, G.W. (1987). The Efficient Secret: The Cabinet and the Development of Political Parties in Victorian England, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
13. Cox, G.W. and Kousser, J.M. (1981). 'Turnout and rural corruption: New York as a test case', American Journal of Political Science, vol. 25(4), pp. 646-63.
14. Dal Bo, E. (2007). 'Bribing voters', American Journal of Political Science, vol. 51(4), pp. 789-803.
15. Dekel, E., Jackson, M.O. and Wolinsky, A. (2008). 'Vote-buying: general elections', Journal of Political Economy, vol. 116(2), pp. 351-80.
16. Dixit, A. and Londregan, J. (1996). 'The determinants of special interests in redistributive politics', Journal of Politics, vol. 58(4), pp. 1132-55.
17. Duflo, E., Glennerster, R. and Kremer, M. (2007). 'Using randomization in development economics research: a toolkit', in (T.P. Schultz and J. Strauss, eds.), Handbook of Development Economics, vol. 4, pp. 3895-962, Amsterdam: Elsevier.
18. Erikson, R.S. and Palfrey, T.R. (2000). 'Equilibria in campaign spending games: theory and data', American Political Science Review, vol. 94(3), pp. 595-609.
19. Finan, F. and Schechter, L. (2012). 'Vote-buying and reciprocity', Econometrica, vol. 80(2), pp. 863-81.
20. Frynas, J.G., Wood, G. and Oliveira, R.S. (2003). 'Business and politics in São Tomé and Príncipe: from cocoa monoculture to petro-state', African Affairs, vol. 102(1), pp. 51-80.
21. Gerber, A.S. (1998). 'Estimating the effect of campaign spending on senate election outcomes using instrumental variables', American Political Science Review, vol. 92(2), pp. 401-11.
22. Gerber, A.S. (2004). 'Does campaign spending work? Field experiments provide evidence and suggest new theory', American Behavioral Scientist, vol. 47(5), pp. 541-74.
23. Gerber, A.S. and Green, D.P. (2000). 'The effects of canvassing, telephone calls, and direct mail on voter turnout: a field experiment', American Political Science Review, vol. 94(3), pp. 653-63.
24. Gonzalez-Ocantos, E., de Jonge, C.K., Melendez, C., Osorio, J. and Nickerson, D.W. (2012). 'Vote buying and social desirability bias: experimental evidence from Nicaragua', American Journal of Political Science, vol. 56(1), pp. 202-17.
25. Green, D.P. and Krasno, J.S. (1988). 'Salvation for the spendthrift incumbent: reestimating the effects of campaign spending in house elections', American Journal of Political Science, vol. 32(4), pp. 884-907.
26. Grossman, G.M. and Helpman, E. (1996). 'Electoral competition and special interest politics', Review of Economic Studies, vol. 63(2), pp. 265-86.
27. Ichino, N. and Schundeln, M. (2012). 'Deterring or displacing electoral irregularities? Spillover effects of observers in a randomized field experiment in Ghana', Journal of Politics, vol. 74(1), pp. 292-307.
28. Jacobson, G.C. (1978). 'The effects of campaign spending in congressional elections', American Political Science Review, vol. 72(2), pp. 469-91.
29. Levitt, S.D. (1994). 'Using repeat challengers to estimate the effect of campaign spending on election outcomes in U.S. house', Journal of Political Economy, vol. 102(4), pp. 777-98.
30. Lindbeck, A. and Weibull, J.W. (1987). 'Balanced-budget redistribution as the outcome of political competition', Public Choice, vol. 52, pp. 273-97.
31. Moulton, B.R. (1990). 'An illustration of a pitfall in estimating the effects of aggregate variables on micro units', Review of Economics and Statistics, vol. 72(2), pp. 334-8.
32. Nichter, S. (2008). 'Vote buying or turnout buying? Machine politics and the secret ballot', American Political Science Review, vol. 102(1), pp. 19-31.
33. Philipson, T.J. and Snyder, J.M. (1996). 'Equilibrium and efficiency in an organized voting market', Public Choice, vol. 89(3-4), pp. 245-65.
34. Robinson, J.A. and Verdier, T. (2003). 'The political economy of clientelism', mimeo.
35. Seibert, G. (2006). Comrades, Clients and Cousins: Colonialism, Socialism and Democratization in São Tomé and Príncipe, 2nd edn. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers.
36. Shaffer, F. (2007). Elections for Sale: The Causes and Consequences of Vote Buying, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers.
37. Stokes, S.C. (2005). 'Perverse accountability: a formal model of machine politics with evidence from Argentina', American Political Science Review, vol. 99(3), pp. 315-25.
38. Vicente, P.C. (2010). 'Does oil corrupt? Evidence from a natural experiment in West Africa', Journal of Development Economics, vol. 92(1), pp. 28-38.
39. Vicente, P.C. (2013). 'A model of vote-buying with an incumbency advantage', mimeo.
40. Wantchekon, L. (2003). 'Clientelism and voting behaviour: evidence from a field experiment in Benin', World Politics, vol. 55(3), pp. 399-422.
41. World Bank (2006). World Development Indicators, available at http://data.worldbank.org/products/data-books/WDI-2006 (last accessed: 17 January 2014).