 Delegation, capture and endogenous information structuresPerrin Lefebvre and David Martimort PSE-Ecole d'économie de Paris (Postprint) from HAL Abstract: A substantial literature has been devoted to analyzing how legislators delegate regulatory power to a more knowledgeable agency. Yet, much less attention has been paid to understand how this delegation process is shaped by the environment in which this agency operates, and more specifically by the actions of interest groups. We propose a model of regulatory capture to assess how the distribution of information across interest groups and agencies impacts optimal delegation. Whether an interest group and his agency share information or not determines the scope for capture and how much discretion should be left to this agency in response. Whether asymmetric information reduces or increases discretion depends on the biases of the group and the agency vis-à-vis Congress. Groups that are more aligned with Congress collect politically relevant information, while more extreme groups remain poorly informed. The information structure that endogenously emerges increases discretion under broad circumstances. Keywords: Delegation; Bureaucracy; Capture; Asymmetric Information; Endogenous Information Structures (search for similar items in EconPapers) Published in Journal of Theoretical Politics, 2022, 34 (3), pp.357-414. ⟨10.1177/09516298221107552⟩ There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it. Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:pseptp:halshs-03758829 DOI: 10.1177/09516298221107552 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in PSE-Ecole d'économie de Paris (Postprint) from HAL |
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