Lobbying and Legislative Bargaining / Elhanan Helpman, Torsten Persson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Helpman, Elhanan.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Persson, Torsten.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w6589.

NBER working paper series no. w6589

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 1998.

Summary:

We examine the effects of the interaction between lobbying and legislative bargaining on policy formation. Two systems are considered: a US-style congressional system and a European-style parliamentary system. First, we show that the policies generated are not intermediate between policies that would result from pure lobbying or from pure legislative bargaining. Second, we show that in congressional systems the resulting policies are strongly skewed in favor of the agenda-setter. In parliamentary systems they are skewed in favor of the coalition, but within the coalition there are many possible outcomes (there are multiple equilibria) with the agenda-setter having no particular advantage. Third, we show that equilibrium contributions are very small, despite the fact that lobbying has a marked effect on policies.

Notes:

Print version record

June 1998.