With interest groups significantly affecting economic performance (according to Mancur Olson) and a vital interest of governments in economic growth and low unemployment in order to win elections, there should be a link between political business cycles and the evolution of lobbies over time...

Mancur Olson's theory of the decline of nations is path-breaking in political economics. It has been tested cross-sectionally in numerous empirical studies. We survey the existing results briefly, with a special focus on studies using the number of lobbies as an exogenous variable. Using data...

This article focuses on the role of unionized members of the parliament. Referring to the famous study by Freeman and Medoff (1984) and considering the more recent literature we first review unions' political power at the example of the US. We conclude that trade unions have not been very...

Mancur Olson's theory of the decline of nations is path-breaking in political economics. It has been tested cross-sectionally in numerous empirical studies. We survey the existing results briefly, with a special focus on studies using the number of lobbies as an exogenous variable. Using data...

Taking Macur Olsonś theory of the decline of nations as pathbreaking in this field we develop a formal model of the behavior of interest groups and their interaction to win some deeper insights into the interior mechanics of the interest-group-state. Followed by a brief survey of empirical...

This article focuses on the role of unionized members of the parliament. Referring to the famous study by Freeman and Medoff (1984) and considering the more recent literature we first review unions' political power at the example of the US. We conclude that trade unions have not been very...

With interest groups significantly affecting economic performance (according to Mancur Olson) and a vital interest of governments in economic growth and low unemployment in order to win elections, there should be a link between political business cycles and the evolution of lobbies over time...

This article focuses on the role of unionized members in parliament. Unions have not been successful in increasing their monopoly power during the last decades in the US. Similarly, a recent study for Germany comes to the result that union members in the "Bundestag" cannot be seen as the...