IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/tpr/jeurec/v5y2007i2-3p614-623.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Political Biases in Lobbying under Asymmetric Information

Author

Listed:
  • David Martimort
  • Aggey Semenov

Abstract

This paper introduces asymmetric information in a pluralistic model of interest groups competition and analyzes its impact on policy biases. Lobbying groups are uninformed on a decision maker's preferences and use nonlinear contributions not only to compete for the agent's services but also to learn about his preferences in an otherwise standard common agency model of lobbying. Asymmetricinformation can be either on the decision maker's ideal point (horizontal differentiation) or on the strength of his own preferences for ideology (vertical differentiation). At equilibrium, asymmetric information redistributes bargaining powers between interest groups and the decision maker in non-trivial ways that may depend on the kind of informational asymmetry which is postulated. Asymmetric information tends to mitigate the influence of interest groups and contributions might be significantly reduced. Interest groups no longer contribute for a change in policy what it is worth to them as under complete information. Contributions incorporate a discount related to the group's ability to solve the asymmetric information problem. (JEL: D72, D82) (c) 2007 by the European Economic Association.

Suggested Citation

  • David Martimort & Aggey Semenov, 2007. "Political Biases in Lobbying under Asymmetric Information," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 5(2-3), pages 614-623, 04-05.
  • Handle: RePEc:tpr:jeurec:v:5:y:2007:i:2-3:p:614-623
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1542-4774/issues
    File Function: link to full text
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Octavian Strimbu, 2022. "Partial Verifiability Induced Contests," Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'économie 22.05, Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, Département d’économie.
    2. Martimort, David & Semenov, Aggey, 2008. "Ideological uncertainty and lobbying competition," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(3-4), pages 456-481, April.
    3. Octavian Strimbu & Patrick Gonzalez, 2013. "Does Transparency Reduce Corruption ?," Cahiers de recherche CREATE 2013-5, CREATE.
    4. Schnakenberg, Keith & Turner, Ian R, 2023. "Formal Theories of Special Interest Influence," SocArXiv 47e26, Center for Open Science.
    5. 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.
    6. Rafael Lima & Humberto Moreira & Thierry Verdier, 2008. "Lobbying and Information Transmission in Customs Unions," Working Papers 09_01, Universidade de São Paulo, Faculdade de Economia, Administração e Contabilidade de Ribeirão Preto.
    7. Achim Voss & Mark Schopf, 2018. "Special interest politics: Contribution schedules vs. Nash bargaining," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(2), pages 256-273, July.
    8. Achim Voss & Mark Schopf, 2016. "Special Interest Politics: Contribution Schedules versus Nash Bargaining," Working Papers Dissertations 27, Paderborn University, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics.
    9. Bils, Peter & Duggan, John & Judd, Gleason, 2021. "Lobbying and policy extremism in repeated elections," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 193(C).
    10. Manjhi, Ganesh & Mehra, Meeta Keswani, 2017. "Dynamics of the Economics of Special Interest Politics," Working Papers 17/206, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

    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:tpr:jeurec:v:5:y:2007:i:2-3:p:614-623. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Kelly McDougall (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://direct.mit.edu/journals .

    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.