Coggins, Jay S. Graham-Tomasi, Theodore Roe, Terry L.
Abstract
Governments often establish economic policy in response to political pressure by interest groups. Since these groups' political activities may alter prices, economies so affected cannot be characterized by perfect competition. We develop a model of a "lobbying economy" in which consumers' choice of political activity simultaneously determines relative prices and income levels. They balance the loss in income due to lobbying payments against the potential gain in wealth from a favorable government price policy. This paper proves the existence of an equilibrium in economies of this sort. We reformulate the economy as a generalized lobbying game and prove the existence of a non-cooperative equilibrium in the game. This equilibrium is then shown to be an equilibrium in the economy.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by University of Minnesota, Economic Development Center in its series Bulletins with number
7468.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: