Interest groups can influence political decisions in two distinct ways: by offering contributions to political actors and by providing them with relevant information that is advantageous for the group. We analyze the conditions under which interest groups are more inclined to use one or the...

We analyze the incentives for interest groups to lobby the legislature for favorable policy and compare two institutional frameworks, a U.S. Congress-style legislature and a European-style parliament. The results provide a rationale for why lobby groups are more active in the U.S. Congress. The...

The budget forms the legal basis for government spending, and timely budgets, enacted before the new fiscal year, are an integral part of good governance. This paper examines the causes of late budgets using a unique dataset of budget completion dates for US state governments 1988-2007,...

This paper shows how Danish administrative register data can be combined with survey data at the person level and be used to validate information collected in the survey. Register data are collected by automatic third party reporting and the potential errors associated with the two data sources...