Tilman Klumpp wins American Law and Economics Review Distinguished Article Prize

The American Law and Economics Review awarded its 2015 Distinguished Article Prize to Economics Professor Tilman Klumpp for the paper "Leveling the Playing Field? The Role of Public Campaign Funding in Elections" (joint with Hugo Mialon and Michael Williams). In a series of First Amendment cases, the U.S. Supreme Court established that government may not regulate campaign finance if the purpose of regulation is to "level the political playing field." The Court has applied this principle to limit the ways in which governments can provide public campaign funding to candidates in elections. A notable example is the Court's decision to strike down so-called "matching" or "trigger" mechanisms that were used to fund elections in several states (Arizona Free Enterprise v. Bennett, 2011).

In the awarded paper, the authors develop a game theoretic model of elections to analyze the effects of different public campaign funding programs on program participation, political speech, and election outcomes. They then review the Arizona Free Enterprise decision in light of the model's prediction and argue that much of the Court's intuitive reasoning that underpins the ruling is not supported by economic analysis. For example, contrary to the Court's arguments, the availability of a public funding option can increase political speech by all candidates, including those that decide to decline public funding.

The article appeared in the Fall 2015 issue of the American Law and Economics Review.