The number o f Japanese firms in Brussels has increased since the creation o f the European Single Market. At the same time, large European firms have become independent political actors and harmonized their lobbying pattern, creating a distinctive business-govemment relationship in the EU. Yet, it still remains to be examined whether Japanese firms are able to utilize their political options a...

This paper introduces an alternative to the lobbying literature’s standard assumption that “money buys policies”. Our model – in which influence-seeking requires both money to “buy access” and managerial time to “utilize access” — offers three significant benefits. First, it counters criticism that the “money-buys-policies” assumption is at odds with reality. Second, its much stronger lobbying ...

This paper aims to fill in the gap in research on the effect of pharmaceutical lobbying on drug reimbursement policy, particularly in Poland, a post-communist country. To this end, we conducted in-depth, semi-structured, anonymous, elite interviews in Poland, supplemented by a review of legislation, policy documents, official reports and press articles, as well as observations. Overall, 109 rep...

A two-count ry, twōrm model has been developed to study equilibrium lobbying posit ions in intra-industry trade under cost uncertainty. A ̄rm chooses either a protect ionist posit ion or a free-t rader posit ion. The model predicts that taking the free-t rader (protect ionist) lobbying posit ion is an e± cient (ine± cient) ̄rm's dominant strategy. In addit ion, for any lobbying posit ion taken ...

This study examines the costs and benefits of uniform accounting regulation in the presence of heterogeneous firms that can lobby the regulator. A commitment to uniform regulation reduces economic distortions caused by lobbying by creating a free-rider problem between lobbying firms at the cost of forcing the same treatment on heterogeneous firms. Resolving this tradeoff, an institutional commi...

This essay identifies the empirical facts about lobbying which are generally agreed upon in the literature. It then discusses challenges to empirical research in lobbying and provides examples of empirical methods that can be employed to overcome these challenges—with an emphasis on statistical measurement, identification, and casual inference. The essay then discusses the advantages, disadvant...

This is the first paper to statistically examine the timing of interest group lobbying. It introduces a theoretical framework based on recurring “structural policy windows” and argues that these types of windows should have a large effect on the intensity and timing of interest group activity. Using a new database of all lobbying expenditures in the U.S. states ranging up to 25 years, the paper...

Though researchers of interest group behavior consistently note that groups often form coalitions when seeking to influence public policy, questions remain about when groups join forces and whether lobbying in a coalition is more or less effective than lobbying alone. In this paper, I approach these questions with a formal model of interest groups coalition formation among information-providing...

Although firms use various strategies to try to influence government policy, with lobbying and corruption chiefly among them, and political institutions play an important role in determining policy choices, very little research has been devoted to these topics. This paper tries to fill this gap. Using cross-country enterprise-level data, it investigates (1) the effect of a key political institu...