capture, and then protect, these rents leads to the creation of new distortions, even as the reform process tries to move … governments throughout the economy sought to capture these rents by developing high margin industries. Continued reform, and …, leading local governments to impose a variety of interregional barriers to trade. Thus, the reform process led to the …

An extensive literature has studied lobbying by special interest groups. We analyze a novel lobbying channel: lobbying … politically motivated spenders of similar magnitude, stressing the economic importance of this lobbying channel. These findings …