Lobbying in Europe: New Firm-level Evidence

Lobbying can provide policy makers with important sector-specific information and thereby facilitating informed decisions. If going far beyond this, in particular if successfully influencing policy makers to unnecessarily tighten regulation or not opening already excessively regulated markets, it co...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Policy File 2017
Main Authors: Dellis, Konstantinos, Sondermann, David
Format: Report
Language:English
Subjects:
European Central Bank
Government
Online Access:Request full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Lobbying can provide policy makers with important sector-specific information and thereby facilitating informed decisions. If going far beyond this, in particular if successfully influencing policy makers to unnecessarily tighten regulation or not opening already excessively regulated markets, it could potentially reduce overall economic welfare. We create a unique firm-level database on EU lobby activity and firm characteristics. We tend to find that firms in more protected sector, e.g. firms from non-tradable or higher regulated sectors tend to spend more for lobby activities. Also such firms tend to have higher profit margins and lower productivity, as often the case in sheltered sectors.