Auctioning Public Office

Campaign promises and campaign spending are modelled as integral parts of a signaling mechanism that transmits information about can- didates' abilities and proposed policies to the voters. We suggest that viewing promises and spending as inseparable parts of the same mechanism is essential in moving towards providing a microfoundation framework of political campaigns. Political competition in spending and promising is modeled as an auction which enables us to derive results about the laws governing political campaigns. The degree of commitment is crucial to the mixture of signaling used by candidates.