Influencing Connected Legislators

Marco Battaglini and Eleonora Patacchini

No 11571, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: This paper studies how interest groups allocate campaign contributions when congressmen are connected by social ties. We establish conditions for the existence of a unique Nash equilibrium in pure strategies for the contribution game and characterize the associated allocation of the interest groups' moneys. While the allocations are generally complex functions of the environment (the voting function, the legislators' preferences and the social network topology), they are simple, monotonically increasing functions of the respective legislators' Bonacich centralities when the legislators are office motivated or the number of legislators is large. Using data on the 109th-113th Congresses and on congressmen's alumni connections, we estimate the model and find evidence supporting its predictions.

Keywords: Interest groups; Economics of networks (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D78 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-gth and nep-soc
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Influencing Connected Legislators (2018)
Working Paper: Influencing Connected Legislators (2016)
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