ABSTRACT
In modern politics, firms tend to invest in politicians who have ability to solve conflicts in the fields that the firms have interests in. When two firms contribute money to the same politician, a tie between the firms is formed. In this paper we investigate mechanisms behind the tie formation by analyzing campaign contribution records made by firms during the 2008 Taiwanese legislator election. We conduct a simulation experiment to show non-randomness of the campaign contribution network, and propose a dynamic regression model to identify factors behind the tie formation in the network. The results show that not only network structure but also organizational attributes embedded in the structure have impacts on collective behavior of the firms in allocating campaign contributions.
Keywords: Simulation; Bipartite network; Dynamic weighted network; GEE; Third party effect.