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Competing for Attention: Lobbying Time‐Constrained Politicians
Author(s) -
COTTON CHRISTOPHER
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
journal of public economic theory
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.809
H-Index - 32
eISSN - 1467-9779
pISSN - 1097-3923
DOI - 10.1111/jpet.12202
Subject(s) - contest , economics , order (exchange) , outcome (game theory) , microeconomics , public economics , resource (disambiguation) , computer science , political science , finance , law , computer network
We develop a model of lobbying in which a time and resource constrained policymaker first chooses which policy proposals to learn about, before choosing which to implement. The policymaker reviews the proposals of the interest groups who provide the highest contributions. We study how policy outcomes and contributions depend on policymaker constraints and the design of the “Contest for Attention.” Among other results, awarding attention to the highest contributors generally guarantees the first best policy outcome. It can also lead to the highest possible contributions, suggesting that a policymaker may not need to sacrifice policy in order to maximize contributions. Our results also give insight into other settings where agents compete for a decision maker's attention.