ERIKSON, Robert S <br/><br/>
Equilibria in campaign spending games :  theory and data 

 -  2000 
<br/><br/> We present a formal game-theoretic model to explain the simultaneity problem that makes it difficult to obaint unbiased estimates of the effects of both incumbent and challenge spending in U.S. House elections. The model predicts a particular form of correlation between the expected closeness of the race and the level of spending by both candidates, which implies that the simultaneity problem should not be present in close races and should be progessively more severe in the range of safe races that are empiracally observed. This is confirmed by comparing simple OLS regression of races that are expected to be close with races that  are not, using House incumbent races spanning two decades