Manufacturing doubt

Abstract

In their efforts to affect regulations, firms have developed specific strategies to exploit scientific uncertainty. They have manufactured doubt by hiring and funding dissenting scientists, by producing and publicizing favorable scientific findings and by generally concealing their involvement in biased research. We propose a new model to study the interplay between scientific uncertainty, firms' miscommunication and public policies. The government is benevolent but populist, and maximizes social welfare as perceived by citizens. The industry can produce costly reports showing that its activity is not harmful. Citizens are unaware of the industry's miscommunication. We first characterize the industry's optimal miscommunication policy. The industry notably ceases miscommunicating abruptly when scientists' belief reaches a critical threshold. We identify a natural condition under which miscommunication is stronger under a tax on emissions than under command and control. We then analyze research funding. A populist government may support research to enable firms to falsely reassure citizens. Establishing an independent research agency helps limit the welfare losses induced by populist policies.

How do lobbies and NGOs try to influence dietary behaviour?

“…Conversely, firms possess more and more money and can finance a growing amount of research. In this way, if the studies risk undermining the image of the manufacturers who finance the studies, they do not publish them (Bramoullé and Orset, 2018). On the other side, the NGOs may make exaggerated statements.…”

“…For thirty years, consumers received information from public services or private initiatives on food packaging related to sustainable development. According to the website of Eco-label Index (2018), there were 463 eco-labels9 in 199 countries and 25 industry sectors in 2018. The European Commission (2012) identified 129 public and private information programs on the sustainability of foods available at national and European level.According toCranage et al (2004), consumers' perceptions of product quality and food security have an enormous psychological impact on their behaviour and decisions when shopping.…”

Merchants of Doubt: Corporate Political Influence When Expert Credibility is Uncertain

“…good performers, but is less viable when a stakeholder is skeptical or worried about an issue, and has the technical capacity to evaluate firms' reports. A variant of this technique is to spend money to generate and publicize biased scientific findings, in the presence of scientific uncertainty, in order to take advantage of citizens' misperceptions (Bramoullé and Orset, 2015). A second technique is to create front groups, also known as "astroturf lobbying" groups to influence public policy (Lyon and Maxwell, 2004;Cho et al, 2011;Walker, 2014).…”

Lobbying for size and slice of the quota

“…1 This literature has covered international environmental agreements (Habla and Winkler 2013;Marchiori et al 2017), international trade (Aidt 1998;Fredriksson 1997;Damania et al 2003), overlapping geneneration models with an environmental tax (Karp and Rezai 2014), investment for clean technology (Grey 2018), corruption and environmental policy (Fredriksson and Svensson 2003) and the choice of emission tax and emission quota (Finkelshtain and Kislev 1997). The current paper focuses on endogenizing the choice of the aggregate quota and its division between lobbyists in the political 1 Hence the political influence is direct in the form of political contributions as opposed to more indirect ways of influence like persuasion and communication as in Yu (2005) and in Bramoullé and Orset (2018). process with multiple principals or lobbyists.…”