The paper provides evidence that the welfare effect of decentralization in countries with weak democratic institutions depends on the multi-jurisdictional vs. single-jurisdictional span of interest group lobbies. Weak democracy leads to capture of local authorities. Captors who have multi-jurisdictional scope internalize inter-jurisdictional externalities of local policies to a larger extent than both the captors with interests in a single jurisdiction and not captured local politicians. Particularly, multi-jurisdictional captors lobby for lower inter-regional trade barriers than single-jurisdictional captors. Based on case study evidence and econometric analysis of a unique data set from Russia, we show that capture by multiregional interest groups leads to significantly better performance of firms with no political connections in the neighboring regions and worse performance of such firms in the captured region compared to capture by regional industrial interests with similar political power or situation of no capture. Our findings have implications for international trade as well: lobbying by multinationals leads to lower protectionism compared to lobbying by national corporations.
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Paper provided by Center for Economic and Financial Research (CEFIR) in its series Working Papers with number
w0093.
Length: 36 pages Date of creation: Jan 2006 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:cfr:cefirw:w0093
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Find related papers by JEL classification: P26 - Economic Systems - - Socialist Systems and Transition Economies - - - Political Economy P27 - Economic Systems - - Socialist Systems and Transition Economies - - - Performance and Prospects D71 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Models of Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
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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.:
Grossman, Gene M & Helpman, Elhanan, 1994.
"Protection for Sale,"
American Economic Review,
American Economic Association, vol. 84(4), pages 833-50, September.
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Other versions:
Gene M. Grossman & Elhanan Helpman, 1992.
"Protection For Sale,"
NBER Working Papers
4149, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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