Collective vs. individual lobbying

This paper presents a menu-auction model in which firms lobby the government to make an environmental regulation less burdensome. In this lobbying game, industrial interests are opposed by an environmental interest group. We compare political outcomes under two institutional arrangements. In the first, firms must join an organization that represents the interests of the industry. In the second, firms would lobby the government individually. The two arrangements result in strikingly different equilibrium outcomes. Only a small fraction of firms join the lobby group under collective lobbying, but all firms participate in lobbying activities when there is no such group. Thus, an attempt by firms to solve the apparent collective action problem through coordination would effectively backfire. The reason is that coordination among firms would increase the leverage available to the government, to demand high political contributions. We also evaluate the desirability of the two lobbying regimes from the private perspective of individual firms, and from the perspective of society as a whole. This permits us to evaluate possible restrictions on lobbying activities.