"Buying" Votes in Japan’s Lower House.

Japan?s new electoral system for the Lower House eliminated the necessity of intraparty competition at the election stage, which many political reformers and scholars hope will make money less necessary to ?buy? votes. In addition, new campaign finance regulations were adopted to make the flow of money more transparent. However, elections may not have become any less expensive because candidates appear to be spending considerable sums to boost their vote shares in the single-member districts. For this reason, money and votes should be positively correlated in Japan?s new system. In this paper, I examine the empirical relationship between campaign spending and vote shares for politicians in the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). I uncover a strong and positive correlation between candidates? expenditures and vote shares, which underscores the continued importance of money for election campaigns in Japan?s Lower House. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]