Advancing the Empirical Research on Lobbying

Figueiredo, John M. de; Richter, Brian Kelleher

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2360575

Cited by 41 publications

(57 citation statements)

References 150 publications

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“…25 A lobbyist accepts proposals from citizen-clients and receives access from policymakers for the presentation of some proposals. They charge their n l t clients a service fee of k t and pay policymakers for access by supplying a portfolio consisting of financial contributions and policy proposals of a specific informational quality.…”

Section: Lobbying Firmsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Repeated Lobbying by Commercial Lobbyists and Special Interests

Groll

Ellis

2015

SSRN Journal

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Using a model of repeated agency, we explain previously unexplained features of the real-world lobbying industry. Lobbying is divided between direct representation by special interests to policymakers, and indirect representation where special interests employ professional intermediaries called commercial lobbyists to lobby policymakers on their behalf. Our analytical structure allows us to explain several trends in lobbying. For example, using the observation that in the U.S. over the last 20 years policymakers have spent an increasing amount of their time fundraising as opposed to legislating, we are able to explain why the share of commercial lobbyist activity in total lobbying has risen dramatically and now constitutes over 60% of the total. The key scarce resource in our analysis is policymakers' time. They allocate this resource via implicit repeated agency contracts which are used to incent special interests and commercial lobbyists to provide a mix of financial contributions and information on policy proposals. These implicit agency contracts solve both an information problem in the presence of unverifiable policy information and a contracting problem in the absence of legal enforcement. These repeated relationship, that are often described using the pejorative term cronyism in the popular press, may in certain circumstances be welfare improving. Terms of use: Documents inJEL-Codes: D720, D780, D830, H110, P160.

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Section: Lobbying Firmsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Repeated Lobbying by Commercial Lobbyists and Special Interests

Groll

Ellis

2015

SSRN Journal

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“…Lobbying efforts, in contrast, target specific issues, which must be disclosed along with associated expenditures. Finally, firms devote more resources to lobbying than any other form of political activity (Baron, 2010), typically spending five times more on lobbying than on PAC contributions (de Figueiredo & Richter, 2013) in any given year. The recent electronic availability of lobbying data thus presents an opportunity to advance empirical research into the relationship between environmental performance and political activity.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Lobby expenditures, which are consistently five times larger than PAC contributions, have been markedly absent from empirical studies (de Figueiredo & Cameron, 2009;de Figueiredo & Richter, 2013). This is a concern since there is a dearth of credible evidence that campaign contributions affect political outcomes and mounting evidence that lobbying is the most effective means to influence public policy (de Figueiredo, 2002).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Corporate Environmental Performance and Lobbying

Delmas

Lim

Nairn-Birch

2016

AMD

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In 2013, the energy and natural resources sector spent $359 million lobbying. Such spending is largely perceived as a strategy by industry to oppose regulation. Research has barely begun to investigate how firm-level performance on salient political issues affects corporate political strategy. In this paper, we address this issue in the context of the recent climate change policy debate in the United States. We hypothesize a U-shaped relationship between greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and lobbying expenditures. To test our hypothesis, our study leverages novel data on firm-level GHG emissions and lobbying expenses aimed specifically at climate change legislation. Our results based on 3,194 firm-observations during a 4 year-period, suggest that both dirty and clean firms are active in lobbying, which challenges the view of adversarial corporate strategy.

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“…Soft money contributions have been banned by the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act. 31 In a recent survey of the literature de Figueredo and Richter (2014) argue that, in the 2011-2012 political cycle, PAC contributions amounted to approximately 750 million dollars per year, whereas the total lobbying expenditures by organized groups reached 3.5 billion dollars. In other words, while the latter continue to represent the vast majority of interest groups money, the most recent figures suggest that PAC contributions have become relatively more important, representing approximately eighteen percent of the total.…”

Section: Data On Lobbying Expendituresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lobbying Expenditures on Migration: a Descriptive Analysis

Facchini¹,

Mayda²,

Mishra³

2015

CESifo Economic Studies

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In this paper we carry out a descriptive analysis of lobbying expenditures on migration in the US between 1998 and 2005. While PAC contributions and lobbying are in general positively correlated, our results suggest that this is not the case when it comes to lobbying on migration. As a result, any analysis of the role of lobbying in migration should not focus on PAC contributions alone. Comparing lobbying on migration and trade, we find that substantially more resources are spent on the latter than on the former.Finally, lobbying on migration appears to be more concentrated than lobbying on trade both across sectors and across organizations. 1 We thank for useful comments seminar participants at the CESifo workshop on "Migration Policies" in Munich. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy.

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Advancing the Empirical Research on Lobbying

Abstract: ABSTRACT

Cited by 41 publications

References 150 publications

Repeated Lobbying by Commercial Lobbyists and Special Interests

Repeated Lobbying by Commercial Lobbyists and Special Interests

Corporate Environmental Performance and Lobbying

Lobbying Expenditures on Migration: a Descriptive Analysis

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