Collective lobbying organizations and some big companies showed up as cautious partners in the design of the Affordable Care Act. In addition of being consulted by executives, they intensively lobbied legislators. The qualitative and statistical analysis I conduct here shows a positive impact of...

Are business associations - private, formal, nonprofit organizations designed to promote the common interests of their members - positive or negative for the economy and overall welfare? Scholars from institutional and organizational economics, on the one side, and from industrial organization,...

This paper presents a dynamic version of the common agency model – originally developed in the trade literature to describe interactions between interest groups and politicians – to illustrate that socially responsible activity by corporations may serve as profit-enhancing by increasing...

In Deutschland soll ein Lobbyregister eingeführt werden. Fraglich ist, ob das vorgesehene Gesetz ausgewogene Regelungen vorsieht, um für hinreichende Transparenz in der Einflussnahme zu sorgen. Die vorgeschlagenen Maßnahmen reichen nicht aus, um die Einflussnahme vollständig und aktuell...

Why do committees exist? The extant literature emphasizes that they pool dispersed information across members. In this paper, we argue that they may also serve to discourage outside influence or capture by raising its cost. As such, committees may contain members who add no new information to...

Can banks exploit the political economy to generate revenue? If bank creditors (local depositors) are voters, the bank's capital structure can act as a tool to impact the electorate and thus bail-outs by changing the relative group size of voters who favor as opposed to object bailouts.As the...

The perceived increase in corporate political influence has raised concerns that corporations advance policies that benefit capital and harm labor. We examine whether money in politics harms labor using the surprise Supreme Court ruling Citizens United v. FEC (2010), which rendered bans on...

We study the extent to which market participants are informed about firms' political connections when the connections are not publicly disclosed and how it affects pricing efficiency. Using a sample of public announcements of government officials' corruption investigations, we find that, on...

There is growing evidence that economic freedom enhances economic growth. In order to safeguard economic freedom, integrating economic rights into the constitution almost seems to suggest itself. Constitutional rules, though, are not self-enforcing and thus suffer credibility problems. Many...

There is growing evidence that economic freedom enhances economic growth. In order to safeguard economic freedom, integrating respective rights into the constitution almost seems to suggest itself. Yet, constitutional rules are not self-enforcing and thus suffer credibility problems. Many...