Even in the wake of the most sweeping campaign finance reform law to be enacted in three decades, further significant reform is inevitable. Special interest money continues to flow through loopholes in the Act, and the Presidential Election Campaign Fund is near collapse. The next reform should...

In this paper, we argue that campaign contributions are not a form of policy-buying, but are rather a form of political participation and consumption. We summarize the data on campaign spending, and show through our descriptive statistics and our econometric analysis that individuals, not...

In this paper we consider a number of experiments to determine whether aspiring managers can solve non-market strategy problems. Conducting a survey of nearly 300 MBA students, we show that with simple, single-stage problems, managers are very competent in reaching the optimal choice given their...

One of the central concerns about American policy-making institutions is the degree to which political outcomes can be influenced by interested parties. While the literature on interest group strategies in particular institutions - legislative, administrative, and legal - is extensive, there is...

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...

This paper examines the amount and organization (individual vs. collective) of lobbying by firms in administrative agencies. It explores the power and limitations of the collective-action theories and transaction-cost theories in explaining lobbying. It introduces a dataset of over 900 lobbying...

This paper examines the amount and organization of lobbying (internal organization vs. trade association) by firms in administrative agencies. It explores the power and limitations of the collective action theories and transaction cost theories in explaining lobbying. It introduces a dataset of...

This paper examines how the density and governance of vertically related populations affect the life chances of organizations. We integrate the literatures on organizational ecology and vertical integration to develop a theory of how 1) specialized upstream industries affect downstream survival...

This paper introduces the special issue on lobbying of "Business and Politics." It explains why the source of real influence in politics is not money or campaign finance contributions. Rather, the paper argues that lobbying and information provision by interest groups to politicians is a much...

We formally model the impact of presidential policymaking on the willingness of bureaucrats to exert effort and stay in the government. In the model, centralized policy initiative by the president demotivates policy-oriented bureaucrats and can impel them to quit rather than implicate themselves...