Shadow Lobbyists

Rocco d`Este (), Mirko Draca () and Christian Fons-Rosen
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Rocco d`Este: University of Sussex
Mirko Draca: University of Warwick
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Rocco d'Este

No inetwp139, Working Papers Series from Institute for New Economic Thinking

Abstract: Special interest influence via lobbying is increasingly controversial and legislative efforts to deal with this issue have centered on the principle of transparency. In this paper we evaluate the effectiveness of the current regulatory framework provided by the US Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA). Specifically, we study the role of ex-Congressional officials who join US lobbying firms in positions that could be related to lobbying activity but without officially registering as lobbyists themselves. We find that firm lobbying revenues increase significantly when these potential `shadow lobbyists` join, with effects in the range of 10-20%. This shadow lobbyist revenue effect is comparable to the effect of a registered lobbyist at the median of the industry skill distribution. As such, it is challenging to reconcile the measured shadow lobbyist effect with the 20% working time threshold for registering as a lobbyist. Based on our estimates, the contribution of unregistered ex-Congressional officials could explain 4.9% of the increase in sectoral revenues, compared to 24.0% for the group of registered officials.

Keywords: Lobbying; Revolving Door; Political Money (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 51 pages
Date: 2020-10-23
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pol
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Related works:
Working Paper: Shadow Lobbyists (2023)
Working Paper: Shadow Lobbyists (2023)
Working Paper: Shadow Lobbyists (2023)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:thk:wpaper:inetwp139

DOI: 10.36687/inetwp139

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