Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/31165 
Year of Publication: 
2005
Series/Report no.: 
Discussion Paper No. 1408
Publisher: 
Northwestern University, Kellogg School of Management, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science, Evanston, IL
Abstract: 
Since campaign finance reform is usually motivated by the concern that existing legislation can not effectively prevent campaign contributions to 'buy favors', this paper assumes that contributions influence political decisions. But, given that it is also widely recognized that interest groups achieve influence by providing political decision makers with policy relevant information, we also assume that lobbies engage in non-negligible informational lobbying. We focus on a single political decision to be taken and offer a simple model in which the optimal influence strategy is a mixture of both lobbying instruments. Our main result is to show that campaign finance reform may have important side-effects: It may deter informational lobbying so that less policy relevant information is available and as a result political decisions become less efficient.
Subjects: 
party and candidate financing, lobbying
interest groups
experts
information transmission
contributions
influence
political decision making process
JEL: 
C72
D72
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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