Social Sciences Brown Bag Seminar

With B. Pablo Montagnes.

We consider a model of lobbying in which an interest group can directly solicit a policy favor from a politician, or transmit her request through an external lobbyist on a fee-for-service basis. The lobbyist's value derives from her ability to investigate and screen clients according to the political merits of their request. However, her ability to extract that value in the form of profits is also dependent on the equilibrium credibility of her messages to the politician. Inspired by recent empirical results, we use the model to examine the effect of connections between the lobbyist and the politician, their ideological alignment, and the informational environment on the profitability of lobbyists, the price of lobbying services, and the welfare politicians.