Who wins (and loses) from lobbying? Evidence from the Foreig n Agents Registration Act
Abstract:
This paper examines the benefits and costs of lobbyin g among three main groups---lobbyists' clients, legislators, and the people legislators represent. We do this by exploiting a unique feature of foreig n lobbying in the United States: Lobbyists must report detailed accounts of their political activity on behalf of foreign clients. We combine the fore ign government-lobbyist-legislator linkages these data provide---which are not present in domestic lobbying data---and several sources of exogenous va riation in connections of lobbying clients and legislators to causally iden tify the impact of lobbying. Across multiple outcomes, we find that foreign countries and legislators benefit from lobbying. The people from more heav ily lobbied congressional districts, however, do not, with greater lobbying intensity causally linked to lower district-level employment and gross dom estic product growth. We then provide evidence that the negative effects fo r constituents are due to misallocation arising from special interest captu re. Our results challenge the view that lobbyists mainly provide technical expertise for better policymaking and highlight that the benefits clients o f lobbyists receive may come at the expense of voters.
DTSTAMP:20260504T141859Z DTSTART:20250714T130000Z DTEND:20250714T140000Z SEQUENCE:0 TRANSP:OPAQUE END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR