Philipp Georg Denter

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Denter
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Philipp Georg
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http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=1533404

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    Item type:Publication,
    Do Polls Create Momentum in Political Competition?
    (n.a., 2014-07-22)
    Denter, Philipp  
    ;
    Sisak, Dana
    We explore how public opinion polls affect candidates' campaign spending in political competition. Generally, polls lead to (more) asymmetric behavior. Under a majority rule there always exists an equilibrium in which the initially more popular candidate invests more in the campaign and thereby increases her lead in expectation: polls create momentum. When campaigning is very effective and the race is very close, a second type of equilibrium may exist: the trailing candidate outspends and overtakes his opponent. Regardless of the type of equilibrium, polls have a tendency to decrease expected total campaigning expenditures by amplifying ex-ante asymmetries between candidates and thus defusing competition. When candidates care also for their vote share in addition to having the majority, candidates' incentives crucially depend on the distribution of voters' candidate preferences.
    Type:discussion paper
    Issue:1326
    URI:https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/86605
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    Item type:Publication,
    A theory of communication in political campaigns
    (2013-02-22)
    Denter, Philipp  
    In this paper I develop a formal theory of campaign communications. Voters have priors about the quality of candidates' policies in the different policy issues and about the issues' relative importance. Candidates spend time or money (TV ads, public speeches, etc.) in an effort to influence voters' decision at the ballot. Influence has two simultaneous effects: (i) it increases the quality of the policy in the issue as perceived by the voters through policy advertising and (ii) it makes the issue more salient through issue priming, thereby increasing the issue's perceived importance. A strategy is an allocation of influence activities to the different issues or topics. I show conditions under which candidates' strategies converge or diverge, which issues - if any - will dominate the campaign, and under what conditions candidates are forced to focus on issues in which they are perceived to be weak. I develop a set of novel testable predictions and discuss the model's predictive power by example of the 2008 presidential campaign in the U.S.
    Type:discussion paper
    Issue:2013-02
    URI:https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/89610