Marie Rekkas

The Impact of Campaign Spending on Votes in Multiparty Elections

The impact of candidate campaign spending on votes and abstention in multiparty elections is estimated from the specification of a structural model of voter behavior. This model accounts for the endogeneity of campaign spending as well as the heterogeneity in voter preferences. Empirical results are estimated from aggregate (actual) election data. The results demonstrate the importance of spending during the campaign period and voter heterogeneity with respect to these expenditures. The own- and cross-expenditure vote share elasticity estimates reveal that political campaign spending not only redistributes voters across parties but also decreases the size of the abstaining group of the electorate.

Incumbency advantages in the Canadian Parliament

We apply a regression discontinuity approach to determine incumbency advantages in the Canadian Parliament, finding that incumbents enjoy a 9.4-11.2% increased probability of winning over non-incumbents. Owing to the presence of multiple parties, an incumbency advantage in terms of vote share does not always translate to an increased probability of winning, because incumbents do not necessarily obtain votes from their closest opponent. Also, under the assumption that strategic exit is not an issue, we are able to split the incumbency advantage into party incumbency and individual candidate incumbency components, finding that the advantage is almost entirely due to the individual.

Campaign Spending Limits, Incumbent Spending, and Election Outcomes

We study the impact of campaign spending limits for candidates in Canadian federal elections. We first demonstrate that spending limits are binding mostly for incumbent candidates. We then use this information to produce endogeneity-corrected estimates for the impact of incumbent spending on electoral vote shares. Furthermore, we examine the impact of spending limits on broader measures of electoral outcomes, finding that larger limits lead to less close elections, fewer candidates, and lower voter turnout.

Incumbency Advantages in the Canadian Parliament (Les Avantages De L’Élu En Place Dans Les Élections AU Parlement Du Canada)

We apply a regression discontinuity approach to determine incumbency advantages in the Canadian Parliament, finding that incumbents enjoy a 9.4-11.2% increased probability of winning over non-incumbents. Owing to the presence of multiple parties, an incumbency advantage in terms of vote share does not always translate to an increased probability of winning, because incumbents do not necessarily obtain votes from their closest opponent. Also, under the assumption that strategic exit is not an issue, we are able to split the incumbency advantage into party incumbency and individual candidate incumbency components, finding that the advantage is almost entirely due to the individual.

Third-order inference for the Weibull distribution

Recent third-order likelihood analysis theory is applied to obtain improved confidence intervals for scalar component interest parameters of the Weibull model. This theory involves implicit but appropriate conditioning and marginalization. Both the censored and complete Weibull models are examined where primary interest is focused on assessing the shape, scale or median parameter. The simulation results indicate the increased accuracy of this method relative to the conventional first-order likelihood ratio and Wald departure procedures. Applications to strike duration data are presented.

IMPROVED INFERENCE FOR FIRST-ORDER AUTOCORRELATION USING LIKELIHOOD ANALYSIS

Testing for first-order autocorrelation in small samples using the standard asymptotic test can be seriously misleading. Recent methods in likelihood asymptotics are used to derive more accurate p-value approximations for testing the autocorrelation parameter in a regression model. The methods are based on conditional evaluations and are thus specific to the particular data obtained. A numerical example and three simulations are provided to show that this new likelihood method provides higher order improvements and is superior in terms of central coverage even for autocorrelation parameter values close to unity. Copyright 2008 The Authors

Gender and Elections: An Examination of the 2006 Canadian Federal Election

The existing literature on gender effects in the electoral process offers little evidence of significant gender vote share differentials. In this paper it is shown that for the 2006 Canadian federal election once candidate campaign spending is introduced into the model with appropriate flexibility in the vote share responsiveness across genders, significant differences are found to exist between male and female candidates. The findings suggest that for equal levels of spending, male incumbents have a vote share advantage relative to female incumbents though this vote share advantage is found to diminish with increased expenditures. Female non-incumbent candidates on the other hand, have a vote share advantage over male non-incumbent candidates for higher levels of expenditure and this advantage was found to increase with increased expenditures.

Inference for the Sharpe Ratio Using a Likelihood-Based Approach

The Sharpe ratio is the prominent risk-adjusted performance measure used by practitioners. Statistical testing of this ratio using its asymptotic distribution has lagged behind its use. In this paper, highly accurate likelihood analysis is applied for inference on the Sharpe ratio. Both the one- and two-sample problems are considered. The methodology has distributional accuracy and can be implemented using any parametric return distribution structure. Simulations are provided to demonstrate the methods superior accuracy over existing methods used for testing in the literature.