Interest groups and the durability of law

Saul Levmore

Chapter 8 in The Timing of Lawmaking, 2017, pp 171-194 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: At any given point, lawmakers and interest groups benefit if the laws they pass are long-lived, or durable. The quest for durability explains some kinds of licensing, but a more important conclusion is that it explains a preference for spending programs, rather than mere regulation. Expenditures create endowment effects, to be sure, but spending programs are especially appealing to their beneficiaries when they bring about physical assets that future lawmakers will have no reason to dismantle. In an earlier era, the quest for durability might have generated overinvestments, as monumentalist rulers sought to leave their marks. In modern times, durability can be obtained through social programs as well as construction projects. In some settings durable projects can be reversed with targeted taxes, but recapturing previously awarded benefits is more difficult. Keywords: durability, interest groups, retroactivity, public goods, clawbacks

Keywords: Economics and Finance; Law - Academic (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/view/9781785364327.00015.xml (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable

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:elg:eechap:16931_8

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Darrel McCalla ().