We examine the consequences of lobbying and vote buying, assuming this practice were allowed and free of stigma. Two lobbyists compete for the votes of legislators by offering up-front payments to the legislators in exchange for their votes. We analyze how the lobbyists’ budget constraints and legislators’ preferences determine the winner and the payments. When lobbyists are budget constrained then the preferences ofall legislators can matter, and a lobbyist’s relative strength increases more steeply with a budget increase than with an increase of equal magnitude to the legislators’ original preferences for this lobbyist’s positio. When lobbyists are not budget constrained then only the preferences of near median legislators matter and the preferences of these legislators and the budget enter equally in determining the winner.
Vote Buying: Legislatures and Lobbying*
Jackson gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Sciences, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the NSF under grants SES-9986190 and SES 0316493. Wolinsky gratefully acknowledges support from the Sackler Institute of Advanced Studies at Tel-Aviv University and the NSF under grant SES-0452620. Dekel gratefully acknowledges support from the Sapir center of Tel Aviv University and the NSF under grant SES-0820333 for support. We are grateful to the editors, two referees, David Baron, Elchanan Ben Porath, Yi-Chun Chen,Jon Eguia, Tim Feddersen, Sergiu Hart, Alessandro Lizzeri, Roger Myerson, Hugo Sonnenschein, and Balazs Szentes for helpful comments.
Dekel E, Jackson MO, Wolinsky A (2009), "Vote Buying: Legislatures and Lobbying*". Quarterly Journal of Political Science, Vol. 4 No. 2 pp. 103–128, doi: https://doi.org/10.1561/100.00008063
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