Anmerkungen:
Nach Informationen von SSRN wurde die ursprüngliche Fassung des Dokuments March 2013 erstellt
Beschreibung:
This paper analyzes the effective regulation of commercial lobbying activities and focuses on the endogenous choice of regulatory institutions. The analysis uses a model of commercial lobbying in which citizens hire lobbyists to present policy matters on their behalf, and policymakers announce political access rules to induce citizens and lobbyists to engage in information acquisition and make financial contributions. The distribution of private costs and public informational benefits from commercial lobbying can explain why commercial lobbying is widely employed, but may not be socially efficient, and may lack public support. I derive the institutional conditions under which a market outcome can be first-best as well as the conditions under which a first-best institution will or will not be self-stable. One result is that current lobbying regulation may fail to be effective: unable to limit lobbyists' and policymakers' incentives to substitute financial contributions for socially beneficial information acquisition. The analysis highlights the necessity to monitor information transfers as well as financial transfers to construct effective regulatory instruments. Additional results explain why endogenous reforms that regulate lobbying activities may or may not occur