Selective Information Provision and Special Interest Influence: The Case of Trade Policy

Carl-Johan Belfrage

The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, 2003, vol. 2, issue 1, 1-29

Abstract: A tool used by special interests to influence policies in their favor but rarely treated in the economic literature is examined. Through contributions to the pool of available information, a bias in public perceptions of policy consequences may be created and policymaking accordingly affected. The results in terms of equilibrium protection levels add to but do not overthrow those of traditional analyses involving contributions to campaign funds.The analysis also shows that as long as some influence over perceived policy consequences can be generated by special interest groups, the political power they can wield by means of campaign contributions is much stronger (and more likely to be extensively used) than that predicted by analyses focused exclusively on campaign contributions. Restrictions on one means of special interest influence can therefore yield significant reductions in both protection and the use of resources for political influence purposes.

Keywords: Special interest groups; Biased information; Campaign contributions; Trade policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.2202/1538-0645.1096 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:bejeap:v:contributions.2:y:2003:i:1:n:3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/bejeap/html

DOI: 10.2202/1538-0645.1096

Access Statistics for this article

The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy is currently edited by Hendrik Jürges and Sandra Ludwig

More articles in The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().