HALL OF MIRRORS: CORPORATE PHILANTHROPY AND STRATEGIC ADVOCACY

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Bertrand, Marianne; Bombardini, Matilde; Fisman, Raymond; Hackinen, Brad; Trebbi, Francesco
• 署名单位: University of Chicago; National Bureau of Economic Research; Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK; University of California System; University of California Berkeley; Boston University; Western University (University of Western Ontario)
• 刊物名称: QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0033-5533
• DOI: 10.1093/qje/qjab023
• 发表日期: 2021
• 页码: 2413-2465
• 关键词: information; MODEL; COMPETITION; rulemaking; POLITICS

摘要

Information is central to designing effective policy, and policy makers often rely on competing interests to separate useful from biased information. We show how this logic of virtuous competition can break down, using a new and comprehensive data set on U.S. federal regulatory rulemaking for 2003-2016. For-profit corporations and nonprofit entities are active in the rulemaking process and are arguably expected to provide independent viewpoints. Policy makers, however, may not be fully aware of the financial ties between some firms and nonprofits-grants that are legal and tax-exempt but hard to trace. We document three patterns that suggest that these grants may distort policy. First, we show that shortly after a firm donates to a nonprofit, the nonprofit is more likely to comment on rules on which the firm has also commented. Second, when a firm comments on a rule, the comments by nonprofits that recently received grants from the firm's foundation are systematically closer in content to the firm's own comments, relative to comments submitted by other nonprofits. Third, the final rule's discussion by a regulator is more similar to the firm's comments on that rule when the firm's recent grantees also commented on it.