Conditioning All-Pay Models of Interest Group Access on Decision Makers’ Priors
35 Pages Posted: 22 Aug 2013
Date Written: 2013
Abstract
We present a formal organizational model of lobbying that allows us to compare disparate classes of models of interest group access - informational models and rent-seeking models - to each other from political decision-maker’s perspective. In it we distill each of the existing types of models down to their core elements, providing us an opportunity to better understand the drivers of each one, yielding insights on how we can improve upon outcomes obtained using the decision criteria underlying each from a 5000 foot perspective. One simple way to do so is by combining the core elements of each choice mechanism. When we do, we find that political decision makers would be ill-advised to use either informational models or rent-seeking models alone as a basis for granting access to interest groups, or even a weighted average of the two, because the political decision maker is better off using a hybrid model that combines elements of both.
Keywords: Lobbying, Information, Bids
JEL Classification: D72
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation