My dissertation contains three chapters studying the strategic allocation of resources in political environments. Chapter 2 asks if redistricting is the result of partisan gerrymandering or apolitical considerations. I develop a statistical test for partisan gerrymandering and apply it to the U.S. Congressional districting plan chosen by the Republican legislature in Pennsylvania in 2001. First, I formally model the optimization problem faced by a strategic Republican redistricter and characterize the theoretically optimal solution. I then estimate the likelihood a district is represented by a Republican, conditional on district demographics. This estimate allows me to determine the value of the gerrymanderer's objective function under any districting plan. Next, I use a geographic representation of the state to randomly generate a sample of legally valid plans. Finally, I calculate the estimated value of a strategic Republican redistricter's objective function under each of the sample plans and under the actual plan chosen by Republicans. When controlling for incumbency the formal test shows that the Republicans' plan was a partisan gerrymander. In Chapter 3 I introduce a new and novel electoral reform that continues to allow redistricting but changes the incentives to do so. This reform ensures that parties earn seats proportional to their performance at the polls without substantially changing the electoral system in the U.S. In order to evaluate the reform's impacts, I model and solve a game that incorporates the redistricting decision, candidate choice, state legislative elections, and policy choice. Unsurprisingly, strategic redistricting biases policy in favor of the redistricting party. In the environments studied, the new reform never increases policy bias, and often reduces it. Political campaigns often require the strategic allocation of resources across multiple contests. In Chapter 4 I analyze these environments in terms of the canonical Colonel Blotto game, beginning with the most basic of Blotto games: Two officers simultaneously allocate their forces across two fields of battle. The larger force on each front wins that battle, and the payoff is the sum of the values of the battles won. I completely characterize the set of Nash equilibria to any such game and provide the unique equilibrium payoffs. This characterization comes from an intuitive graphical algorithm which I then apply to several generalizations of the game. I completely characterize the set of equilibria and provide the unique equilibrium payoffs to Blotto games with battlefield values that vary across players and games with general resource constraints. I also use my approach to solve the Blotto games on more than two battlefields with asymmetric battlefields and force endowments. / text

A fundamental question in politics that has no conclusive answer to this day is whether or not campaign expenditures are pointless. Determining the role of campaign contributions and spending in elections is important for formulating campaign finance reform policy and also for understanding the public choice economics behind elections. Politicians seem convinced that money is an important component in any successful election as illustrated by numerous fundraisers and lofty goals of raising $1 billion for presidential campaigns, yet the empirical research on money’s role in elections has not reached a consensus. This project seeks to further explore the relationship between money and a candidate’s probability of winning an election using panel data econometric techniques and high frequency data from the 2008 U.S. Senate elections.

Economics is the study of the allocation of resources. Since Arrow's Fundamental Welfare Theorems, we know that competitive-markets achieve Pareto allocations when governments correct market failures. Thus, it has largely been the mission of economists to serve as 'Market Engineers': To identify and quantify market failures so the government can implement Pareto-improving policy (make everyone better without making anyone worse). Do Pareto- improving policies get implemented? How does policy become implemented? Achieving a Pareto efficient allocation of a nation's resources requires studying the implementation of policy, and therefore studying the allocation of political resources that influence policy. Policy implementation begins with the electoral process. In this dissertation, I use auction analysis, econometrics, and game theory to study political resource allocations in the electoral process. This dissertation consists of three research papers: Finance-Augmented Median-Voter Model, Vote Empirics, and Colonel Blotto Strategies. The Finance-Augmented Median-Voter Model postulates that candidates' campaign expenditures are bids in a first-price asymmetric all-pay auction in order to explain campaign expenditure behavior. Vote Empirics empirically analyzes the impacts of campaign expenditures, incumbency status, and district voter registration statistics on observed vote-share results from the 2004 congressional election. Colonel Blotto Strategies postulates that parties' campaign allocations across congressional districts may be a version of the classic Col Blotto game from Game Theory. While some equilibrium strategies and equilibrium payoffs have been identified, this paper completely characterizes players' optimal strategies. In total, this dissertation solves candidates' optimal campaign expenditure strategies when campaign expenditures are bids in an all-pay auction. The analysis demonstrates the need for understanding exactly the impacts of various factors, including strategic expenditures, on final vote results. The research uses econometric techniques to identify the effects. Last, the research derives the complete characterization of Col Blotto strategies. Discussed extensions provide testable predictions for cross-district Party contributions. I present this research not as a final statement to the literature, but in hopes that future research will continue its explanation of political resource allocation. An even greater hope is that in time this literature will be used to identify optimal "policy-influencing policies"; constitutional election policies that provide for the implementation of Pareto-improving government policies. / text

In a time when record numbers of dollars are being spent on campaigns the unregulated dollars are flowing faster than ever. Hundreds of millions of dollars in independent expenditures are being used for “issue advocacy”, print and broadcast advertising, which does not expressly endorse or oppose a candidate for office. The one-time campaign finance ceiling has become the campaign finance basement. Individuals are able to give unlimited dollars to 527 organizations, which function outside of all campaign finance regulation and provide a new path for the flow of political dollars. Since the passage of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, commonly known as the McCain-Feingold Act, federally regulated lobbyists and PACS are being edged out of the political dollar due to contribution limits. It is in 1996 that we witness the birth of 527 organizations and the flourishing growth of soft money spending in the campaign process.