Inequality, Lobbying, and Resource Allocation
研究财富不平等如何扭曲公共资源配置：政府将有限资源分配给生产性部门，但部门生产率只有内部人知道，他们通过游说争取优待，导致即使政府追求效率也可能被误导，且贫穷和不平等经济体更易出现公共资源错配。
This paper describes how wealth inequality may distort public resource allocation. A government seeks to allocate limited resources to productive sectors, but sectoral productivity is privately known by agents with vested interests in those sectors. They lobby the government for preferential treatment. The government—even if it honestly seeks to maximize economic efficiency—may be confounded by the possibility that both high wealth and true economic desirability create loud lobbies. Broadly speaking, both poorer economies and unequal economies display greater public misallocation. The paper warns against the conventional wisdom that this is so because such governments are more “corrupt.”