Interest groups seek to influence economic activity through public and private politics. Public politics takes place in the arenas of public institutions, whereas private politics takes place outside public institutions often in the arena of public sentiment. Private politics refers to action by...

This paper provides an empirical test of a theory that relates corporate financial performance (CFP), corporate social performance (CSP), and social pressure from government and social activist for improved social performance. A three-equation structural model is estimated for a large number of...

Synder and Groseclose (2000) develop and apply an innovative method for detecting and estimating the frequency and magnitude of party influence in congressional roll call voting. This paper presents a framework for assessing to coefficient that the authors interpret as "party influence." The...

This paper provides a theory of firm behavior motivated by moral duty, self-interest, and social pressure. A morally-managed and a self-interested firm compete in a market in which their corporate social performance (CSP) provides product differentiation. In addition to acting as consumers,...

Policy-making is a dynamic process in which policies can be changed in each period but continue in the absence of new legislation. We study a dynamic legislative bargaining game with an endogenous status quo where in each period a dollar is allocated with a proposal voted against the allocation...

Pubic policies such as reguation, antitrust, and international trade are the result of public politics--a competition over who gets what with government the arbiter of that competition. Policies are also chosen by private parties without the command or sanction of government. Private policies...

This paper presents a positive theory of corporate social responsibility set in a managerial capitalism context in which managers instead of markets allocate resources, including social expenditures. The theory focuses jointly on the operational management of the firm and on its social...

Congression scholars regularly idenify Speaker Joseph G. Cannon as the personification of centralized authority and partisan strength in the United States Congress. Portraits of Cannon as a tyrant, however, are almost always based on anecdotal evidence and journalistic accounts. This paper...

We explore the relation between certain multiple-sender cheap-talk signaling games and the corresponding screening or mechanism design games. The existence of fully-revealing equilibria in the signaling game implies the existence of implementable mechanisms that mechanisms that yield a...