Policy Influence and Private Returns from Lobbying in the Energy Sector
研究了美国能源企业游说支出对联邦能源立法通过概率的影响，发现游说对政策通过概率影响很小，但平均回报率超过140%。
Firms lobby the U.S. Congress to influence policy-making. This paper quantifies the extent to which lobbying expenditures affect policy enactment. First, I construct a novel dataset comprised of federal energy legislation and lobbying activities by the energy sector during the 110th Congress. Second, I develop and estimate a game- theoretic model where heterogeneous players choose lobbying expenditures to affect the probability that a policy is enacted. I find that the effect of lobbying expenditures on a policy's equilibrium enactment probability is very small. However, the average returns from lobbying expenditures are estimated to be over 140%.