Date:
Location:
Today's Speaker
Adam Bonica (Stanford University), "Old Money: Campaign Finance and Gerontocracy in the United States" (co-authored with Jacob M. Grumbach)
Abstract
Compared to those of other countries, politicians in the United States are among the oldest. We investigate the role of money in politics in maintaining age inequality in political influence and office-holding. Using record linkage, we create a novel dataset that combines administrative data on the age of voters, donors, and candidates. Descriptively, we find that the average dollar in the U.S. campaign finance system comes from a 68-year-old donor—significantly older than the average voter, candidate, or elected official—and that older donors are much more ideologically conservative than younger donors. We then investigate whether candidate age matters to donors. Results from within-district and within-contributor analyses suggest that individuals are more likely to donate and donate more to candidates closer to their age. We conclude with a discussion of how various campaign finance policies might affect the age distribution of money in politics.
Co-sponsored by FAS and IQSS, the Alberto Alesina Seminar on Political Economy supports research-related activities that integrate the study of economics and politics, whether by studying economic behavior in the political process or political behavior in the marketplace. In general, positive political economy is concerned with showing how observed differences among institutions affect political and economic outcomes in various social, economic, and political systems and how the institutions themselves change and develop in response to individual and collective beliefs, preferences, and strategies.
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See the seminar's full schedule at the Alesina Seminar page.
All interested faculty and students are invited to attend.