Inefficient lobbying, populism and oligarchy

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Campante, Filipe R.; Ferreira, Francisco H. G.
• 署名单位: The World Bank; Harvard University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2006.12.006
• 发表日期: 2007
• 页码: 993-1021
• 关键词: Lobbying; populism; Oligarchy; wealth distribution and economic efficiency; INEQUALITY

摘要

This paper analyzes the efficiency consequences of lobbying in a production economy with imperfect commitment. We first show that the Pareto efficiency result found for truthful equilibria of common agency games in static exchange economies no longer holds under these more general conditions. We construct a model of pressure groups where the set of efficient truthful common agency equilibria has measure zero. Second, we show that, under fairly general assumptions, the equilibrium will be biased against the group with the highest productivity of private capital, reflecting the fact that, on the margin, less productive groups find lobbying relatively more rewarding. Finally, as an application, if lobbies representing the poor and the rich have identical organizational capacities, we show that the equilibrium is biased towards the poor, who have a comparative advantage in politics, rather than in production. If the pressure groups differ in their organizational capacity, both pro-rich (oligarchic) and pro-poor (populist) equilibria may arise, all of which are inefficient with respect to the constrained optimum. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.