Finance Symposium

The topic of today's finance symposium was finance reform. I had the opportunity to ask a question and asked whether the Citizens United ruling had any effect on the increase in money spent during the general election. The increase in money spent between 2008 and 2012 on general elections (according to numbers from the Center for Responsible Politics) was approximately 18.9%. The speaker responded that this number was slightly above the historic average and could possibly be attributed to the Citizens United ruling. Another question that I wanted to ask but didn't get the chance to was whether the speakers expect that number to remain static in the future or to increase. If the increase in money spent was accounted for by the $1 billion of outside money, I would not expect the percent change to increase in the future. But if large donors become more accustomed to the new campaign finance laws and learn how to work within them, I would expect this number to increase in the future.

Another question I had was whether the amount of money spent was in nominal or real terms. If the numbers were in nominal terms, using real dollars would shrink the percent increase from one election to another. However I'm still convinced that the percentage increase would be considerably large. It would also be interesting to compare the increase in amount of money spent to several inflation statistics such as the CPI, PCE, and PPI indexes. I am confident that the percentage increase in money spent during elections would outpace inflation statistics. I'm not sure what this means for results of elections or the economy as a whole, I just find that comparison interesting.