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Legislative informational lobbying

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  • Dellis, Arnaud

Abstract

Whom should an interest group lobby in a legislature? I develop a model of informational lobbying, in which a legislature must decide on the allocation of district-specific goods and projects. An interest group chooses to search and provide information on districts' valuations of the goods. The setting is one of distributive politics, where the proposed allocation of goods and projects is endogenous to the information provided by the interest group. I characterize the information search strategy of the interest group. I furthermore establish that the relationship between informational lobbying and legislative majority requirement is non-monotonic. I also determine who gains and who loses from lobbying, identifying circumstances in which legislators would unanimously prefer to ban informational lobbying. Finally, I provide an informational rationale for why interest groups sometimes lobby legislative allies (friendly lobbying).

Suggested Citation

  • Dellis, Arnaud, 2023. "Legislative informational lobbying," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 208(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jetheo:v:208:y:2023:i:c:s0022053122001855
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2022.105595
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    Cited by:

    1. Schnakenberg, Keith & Turner, Ian R, 2023. "Formal Theories of Special Interest Influence," SocArXiv 47e26, Center for Open Science.
    2. Julien Jacob & Caroline Orset, 2020. "Innovation, information, lobby and tort law under uncertainty," Working Papers of BETA 2020-25, Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée, UDS, Strasbourg.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Lobbying; Interest group; Persuasion; Legislative policymaking; Distributive politics;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D78 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Positive Analysis of Policy Formulation and Implementation

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