This paper examines academic earmarks and their role in the funding of university research. It provides a summary and review of the evidence on the supply of earmarks by legislators. It then discusses the role of university lobbying for earmarks on the demand side. Finally, the paper examines...

Despite a large literature on lobbying and information transmission by interest groups, no prior study has measured returns to lobbying. In this paper, we statistically estimate the returns to lobbying by universities for educational earmarks (which now represent 10 percent of federal funding of...