Revolving Door Lobbyists

Abstract

We study how ex-government officials benefit from the personal connections acquired during public service. Lobbyists with experience in the office of a US Senator suffer a 24% drop in generated revenue when that Senator leaves office. The effect is immediate, discontinuous around the exit period, and long-lasting. Consistent with the notion that lobbyists sell access to powerful politicians, the drop in revenue is increasing in the committee assignments power held by the exiting politician.Keywords: Lobbying, Revolving Door, US Congress, Political Connections, Political Elites.JEL Classification: H11, J24, J45. * We thank Nick Bloom, Andy Eggers, Steve Machin, Ignacio Palacios-Huerta, Yona Rubinstein, Ken Shepsle and James Snyder for insightful comments. We also thank participants at various conferences and seminars where we presented various versions of this work. We are grateful to the Centre for Responsive Politics, Columbia Books and LegiStorm for answering our questions regarding the data used in this paper. The Center for Economic Performance provided generous funding. We thank Johannes Schmieder for sharing STATA code with us. Victoria Loidl, Vithal Mittal and Jagveer Singh Kang provided excellent research assistance. All errors remain our own.

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