Clueless Politicians

Cheng Li and Christopher Cotton

No 1341, Working Paper from Economics Department, Queen's University

Abstract: We develop a model of policymaking in which a politician decides how much expertise to acquire or how informed to become about issues before interest groups engage in monetary lobbying. For a range of issues, the policymaker prefers to remain clueless about the merits of reform, even when acquiring expertise or better information is costless. Such a strategy leads to intense lobbying competition and larger political contributions. We identify a novel benefit of campaign finance reform, showing how contribution limits decrease the incentives that policymakers have to remain uninformed or ignorant of the issues on which they vote.

Keywords: lobbying; strategic ignorance; campaign finance; rent seeking (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 D72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2016-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:qed:wpaper:1341

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