TY  - JOUR
AU  - Finan,Frederico
AU  - Schechter,Laura A.
TI  - Vote-Buying and Reciprocity
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 17411
PY  - 2011
Y2  - September 2011
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17411
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17411.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Frederico Finan
Department of Economics
University of California
508-1 Evans Hall #3880
Berkeley, CA 94720-3880
Tel: 310/794-5958
Fax: 310/825-9528
E-Mail: ffinan@econ.berkeley.edu

Laura A. Schechter
Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics
University of Wisconsin, Madison
427 Lorch St.
334 Taylor Hall
Madison, WI
53706 
E-Mail: lschechter@wisc.edu
AB  - While vote-buying is common, little is known about how politicians determine who to target. We argue that vote-buying can be sustained by an internalized norm of reciprocity. Receiving money engenders feelings of obligation. Combining survey data on vote-buying with an experiment-based measure of reciprocity, we show that politicians target reciprocal individuals. Overall, our findings highlight the importance of social preferences in determining political behavior.
ER  -