IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pie/dsedps/2019-247.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Contribution and bribe: lobbying in presence of incumbent and bureaucrat

Author

Listed:
  • Marco Catola

Abstract

This paper discusses the effects on the quality of the decision of the introduction of a watchdog bureaucrat who provides policy recommendations that are costly to be ignored. Through a simple model, it is shown that, if both the politician and the bureaucrat are sensitive to the pressure of an interest group, the positive impact of bureaucrats is very small, even though not null. Moreover, by characterising the conditions that allow this effect, it is shown that if the bureaucrat's recommendation is too binding, the decision power moves from the politician to the bureaucrat, producing a reduction in accountability without any improvement in the quality of the decision.

Suggested Citation

  • Marco Catola, 2019. "Contribution and bribe: lobbying in presence of incumbent and bureaucrat," Discussion Papers 2019/247, Dipartimento di Economia e Management (DEM), University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy.
  • Handle: RePEc:pie:dsedps:2019/247
    Note: ISSN 2039-1854
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ec.unipi.it/documents/Ricerca/papers/2019-247.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Zhihao Yu, 2005. "Environmental Protection: A Theory of Direct and Indirect Competition for Political Influence," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 72(1), pages 269-286.
    2. Matthias Dahm & Nicolás Porteiro, 2008. "Informational lobbying under the shadow of political pressure," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 30(4), pages 531-559, May.
    3. Navin Kartik, 2009. "Strategic Communication with Lying Costs," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 76(4), pages 1359-1395.
    4. B. Douglas Bernheim & Michael D. Whinston, 1986. "Menu Auctions, Resource Allocation, and Economic Influence," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 101(1), pages 1-31.
    5. Frederick J. Boehmke & Sean Gailmard & John W. Patty, 2005. "Whose Ear (or Arm) to Bend? Information Sources and Venue Choice in Policy Making," Public Economics 0502009, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Christopher S. Cotton & Arnaud Déllis, 2016. "Informational Lobbying and Agenda Distortion," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 32(4), pages 762-793.
    7. Grossman, Gene M & Helpman, Elhanan, 1994. "Protection for Sale," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(4), pages 833-850, September.
    8. Bennedsen, Morten & Feldmann, Sven E., 2006. "Informational lobbying and political contributions," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(4-5), pages 631-656, May.
    9. John Ferejohn, 1986. "Incumbent performance and electoral control," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 50(1), pages 5-25, January.
    10. Eric Maskin & Jean Tirole, 2004. "The Politician and the Judge: Accountability in Government," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(4), pages 1034-1054, September.
    11. Sean Gailmard, 2002. "Expertise, Subversion, and Bureaucratic Discretion," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 18(2), pages 536-555, October.
    12. Morten Bennedsen & Sven E. Feldmann, 2006. "Lobbying Bureaucrats," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 108(4), pages 643-668, December.
    13. Pei, Harry Di, 2015. "Communication with endogenous information acquisition," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 160(C), pages 132-149.
    14. Crawford, Vincent P & Sobel, Joel, 1982. "Strategic Information Transmission," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(6), pages 1431-1451, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mireille Chiroleu‐Assouline & Thomas P. Lyon, 2020. "Merchants of doubt: Corporate political action when NGO credibility is uncertain," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(2), pages 439-461, April.
    2. Matthias Dahm & Robert Dur & Amihai Glazer, 2009. "Lobbying of Firms by Voters," Working Papers 080926, University of California-Irvine, Department of Economics.
    3. Thomas Groll & Christopher J. Ellis, 2017. "Repeated Lobbying By Commercial Lobbyists And Special Interests," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 55(4), pages 1868-1897, October.
    4. Groll, Thomas & Ellis, Christopher J., 2014. "A simple model of the commercial lobbying industry," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 299-316.
    5. Cotton, Christopher, 2015. "Competing for Attention," MPRA Paper 65715, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Cotton, Christopher, 2009. "Should we tax or cap political contributions? A lobbying model with policy favors and access," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(7-8), pages 831-842, August.
    7. Christopher Cotton, 2010. "Evidence Revelation in Competitions for Access," Working Papers 2010-21, University of Miami, Department of Economics.
    8. Graham Mallard, 2014. "Static Common Agency And Political Influence: An Evaluative Survey," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(1), pages 17-35, February.
    9. Miyamoto, Takuro, 2014. "Taxes versus quotas in lobbying by a polluting industry with private information on abatement costs," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 141-167.
    10. Cheng Li & Christopher Cotton, 2016. "Clueless Politicians," Working Paper 1341, Economics Department, Queen's University.
    11. Maskin, Eric & Tirole, Jean, 2019. "Pandering and pork-barrel politics," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 176(C), pages 79-93.
    12. Matthias Dahm & Robert Dur & Amihai Glazer, 2014. "How a firm can induce legislators to adopt a bad policy," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 159(1), pages 63-82, April.
    13. Marco Sorge, 2015. "Lobbying (strategically appointed) bureaucrats," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 26(2), pages 171-189, June.
    14. Arnaud Dellis & Mandar Oak, 2016. "Overlobbying and Pareto-improving Agenda Constraint," School of Economics and Public Policy Working Papers 2016-05, University of Adelaide, School of Economics and Public Policy.
    15. Christopher Cotton, 2009. "Competition for Access and Full Revelation of Evidence," Working Papers 2010-12, University of Miami, Department of Economics.
    16. Christopher Cotton, 2013. "Competing for the Attention of Policymakers," Working Papers 2013-14, University of Miami, Department of Economics.
    17. Cheng Li, 2020. "Centralized policymaking and informational lobbying," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 54(4), pages 527-557, April.
    18. Laussel, Didier & van Ypersele, Tanguy, 2012. "When the squeakiest wheel gets the most oil: Exploiting one's nuisance power," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(8), pages 1593-1606.
    19. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 2002. "Political economics and public finance," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 24, pages 1549-1659, Elsevier.
    20. Scott Gehlbach & Konstantin Sonin & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, 2010. "Businessman Candidates," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 54(3), pages 718-736, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    lobbying; interest group; decision making process; bureaucracy;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D73 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Bureaucracy; Administrative Processes in Public Organizations; Corruption

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pie:dsedps:2019/247. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dspisit.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.