This article examines online recruitment via Facebook, Mechanical Turk (MTurk), and Qualtrics panels in India and the United States. It compares over 7300 respondents—1000 or more from each source and country—to nationally representative benchmarks in terms of demographics, political attitudes and knowledge, cooperation, and experimental replication. In the United States, MTurk offers the cheapest and fastest recruitment, Qualtrics is most demographically and politically representative, and Facebook facilitates targeted sampling. The India samples look much less like the population, though Facebook offers broad geographical coverage. We find online convenience samples often provide valid inferences into how partisanship moderates treatment effects. Yet they are typically unrepresentative on such political variables, which has implications for the external validity of sample average treatment effects.

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When firms give money to candidates for public office, what return can they expect on their investment? The answer may depend on the party in power and whether it rewards longstanding contributors, pays back all donors on equal terms, or refuses to be swayed by corporate money. In this analysis of Brazil, we use a regression discontinuity design to identify the effect of an electoral victory on government contracts for a candidate's corporate donors. Firms specializing in public works projects can expect a substantial boost in government contracts-at least 8.5 times the value of their contributions-when they donate to a federal deputy candidate from the ruling Workers' Party (PT) and that candidate wins office. We find no effect among allied parties, suggesting that the PT uses pork to favor its members rather than to maintain a governing coalition. The profile of public works donors to major parties implies that under the PT's stewardship, smaller firms were able to break into the traditionally oligopolistic donations-for-contracts market, presumably taking advantage of the party's lack of relationships with established players. RESUMOQuando empresas fazem doações eleitorais, que retorno sobre investimento podem esperar? A resposta depende de que partido que está no governo, e se ele premia seus contribuintes históricos, recompensa doadores de igual para igual, ou recusa-se a ser influenciado por dinheiro corporativo. Neste artigo, aplicamos o método de descontinuidade de regressão a dados eleitorais brasileiros para identificar o efeito de uma vitoria eleitoral na obtenção de contratos públicos por empresas que fizeram doações de campanha. As empreteiras podem esperar um grande aumento nos seus contratos públicos-pelo menos 8,5 vezes o valor das suas contribuições-quando fazem doações a um candidato a deputado federal do Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) e esse candidato vence a eleição. Não encontramos qualquer efeito entre os partidos aliados, sugerindo que o PT usa os contratos públicos para favorecer a seus filiados, não para manter uma coalizão de governo. O perfil das empreteiras que doam aos principais partidos sugere que, sob o controle do PT, pequenas e médias empresas conseguiram entrar no mercado tradicionalmente oligopolístico de doações e contratos, provavelmente aproveitando a falta de relações do PT com os veteranos daquele jogo.

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