17:45 - 20:00
Friday-Panel
Chair/s:
Arnaud Dellis
Discussant/s:
Markus Baumann
Meeting Room C

In Song Kim, Jan Stuckatz, Lukas Wolters
Strategic and Sequential Links between Campaign Donations and Lobbying

Samuel Mueller
Ask, And You Shall Receive - Strategic Information Transmission in the Public Consultation Procedure of the European Commission

Arnaud Dellis
Legislative Informational Lobbying
Legislative Informational Lobbying
Arnaud Dellis
University of Quebec in Montreal

Whom should an interest group lobby in a legislature? I develop a model of informational lobbying in which a legislature must decide on the allocation of district-specific goods and projects. An interest group chooses sequentially to search and provide information on districts' valuations of the goods. The setting is one of distributive politics with a legislative allocation proposal which is endogeneous to the information provided by the interest group. I characterize the equilibrium search sequence of the interest group, and identify two empirical and institutional implications of the analysis. First, the model rationalizes both friendly and confrontational lobbying, predicting circumstances in which friendly lobbying prevails over confrontational lobbying. Second, the model establishes a relationship between information provision and legislative majority requirement, offering a contrast between the optimal majority requirement if legislators seek to maximize the information they receive versus the monetary contributions they receive.