Suchergebnisse

With interest groups significantly affecting economic performance (according to Mancur Olson) and a vital interest of governments in economic growth and low unemployment in order to win elections, there should be a link between political business cycles and the evolution of lobbies over time which has totally been ignored in the literature up to now. In modeling this link in a theoretical and empirical way we try to answer two questions: Is it possible to interpret Olson's Law of Interest Groups not only as a long run phenomenon but also in a short-run perspective, integrating it into the theory of political business cycles? And: is there any empirical evidence that a typical pattern of lobby behavior and macroeconomic status exists which is consistent over a couple of election periods? In order to investigate these issues, we first analyze some literature that is usually ignored in the more technical contributions evaluating Olsonś law, but proves to be highly important as background for answering the above mentioned questions. We then illustrate how a model consisting of Olsonś interest-groups theory and the endeavors of governments to win the majority of votes in elections could look like, before we perform a time-series-analysis based on the lobby-list of the German Bundestag in order to gain some more insights into the relationships between lobbies, governments and voters. As a result we discover a consistent behavior of the lobbies over the cycle that boils down to some kind of non-aggression pact between the lobbies and the governments irrespective of their political alignments. -- interest groups ; political business cycles ; growth ; unemployment ; inflation

In international relations, short-run incentives for non-cooperation often dominate. Yet, (external) institutions for enforcing cooperation are hampered by national sovereignty, supposedly strengthening the role of selfenforcing mechanisms. This paper examines their scope with a focus on contingent protection aka tit-for-tat in trade policy. By highlighting various strategies in a (linear) partial-equilibrium framework, we show that retaliation of noncooperative behavior by limiting market access works as a disciplining device independently of supply and demand parameters. Our theoretical results are backed by empirical evidence that countries more frequently involved in WTO-mediated disputes entailing tit-for-tat strategies pursue on average more liberal trade regimes.

In international relations, short-run incentives for non-cooperation often dominate. Yet, (external) institutions for enforcing cooperation are hampered by national sovereignty, supposedly strengthening the role of selfenforcing mechanisms. This paper examines their scope with a focus on contingent protection aka tit-for-tat in trade policy. By highlighting various strategies in a (linear) partial-equilibrium framework, we show that retaliation of non- cooperative behavior by limiting market access works as a disciplining device independently of supply and demand parameters. Our theoretical results are backed by empirical evidence that countries more frequently involved in WTO-mediated disputes entailing tit-for-tat strategies pursue on average more liberal trade regimes.

In international relations, short-run incentives for non-cooperation often dominate. Yet, (external) institutions for enforcing cooperation are hampered by national sovereignty, supposedly strengthening the role of selfenforcing mechanisms. This paper examines their scope with a focus on contingent protection aka tit-for-tat in trade policy. By highlighting various strategies in a (linear) partial-equilibrium framework, we show that retaliation of non- cooperative behavior by limiting market access works as a disciplining device independently of supply and demand parameters. Our theoretical results are backed by empirical evidence that countries more frequently involved in WTO-mediated disputes entailing tit-for-tat strategies pursue on average more liberal trade regimes.

With interest groups significantly affecting economic performance (according to Mancur Olson) and a vital interest of governments in economic growth and low unemployment in order to win elections, there should be a link between political business cycles and the evolution of lobbies over time which has totally been ignored in the literature up to now. In modeling this link in a theoretical and empirical way we try to answer two questions: Is it possible to interpret Olson's Law of Interest Groups not only as a long run phenomenon but also in a short-run perspective, integrating it into the theory of political business cycles? And: is there any empirical evidence that a typical pattern of lobby behavior and macroeconomic status exists which is consistent over a couple of election periods? In order to investigate these issues, we first analyze some literature that is usually ignored in the more technical contributions evaluating Olson´s law, but proves to be highly important as background for answering the above mentioned questions. We then illustrate how a model consisting of Olson´s interest-groups theory and the endeavors of governments to win the majority of votes in elections could look like, before we perform a time-series-analysis based on the lobby-list of the German Bundestag in order to gain some more insights into the relationships between lobbies, governments and voters. As a result we discover a consistent behavior of the lobbies over the cycle that boils down to some kind of non-aggression pact between the lobbies and the governments irrespective of their political alignments.

Mancur Olson's theory of the decline of nations is path-breaking in political economics. It has been tested cross-sectionally in numerous empirical studies. We survey the existing results briefly, with a special focus on studies using the number of lobbies as an exogenous variable. Using data from the period 1973--2006, we then present the field's first time-series analysis of the effects of the number of interest groups on the German lobby list and macroeconomic performance, gauged in terms of economic growth and inflation. The number of interest groups (as a proxy for their influence) is shown to have an important impact on macro-variables: Interest group activity significantly leads to a decline in the growth rate and a rise in the inflation rate. Adapted from the source document.

With interest groups significantly affecting economic performance (according to Mancur Olson) and a vital interest of governments in economic growth and low unemployment in order to win elections, there should be a link between political business cycles and the evolution of lobbies over time which has totally been ignored in the literature up to now. In modeling this link in a theoretical and empirical way we try to answer two questions: Is it possible to interpret Olson´s Law of Interest Groups not only as a long run phenomenon but also in a short-run perspective, integrating it into the theory of political business cycles? And: is there any empirical evidence that a typical pattern of lobby behavior and macroeconomic status exists which is consistent over a couple of election periods? In order to investigate these issues, we first analyze some literature that is usually ignored in the more technical contributions evaluating Olson´s law, but proves to be highly important as background for answering the above mentioned questions. We then illustrate how a model consisting of Olson´s interest-groups theory and the endeavors of governments to win the majority of votes in elections could look like, before we perform a time-series-analysis based on the lobby-list of the German Bundestag in order to gain some more insights into the relationships between lobbies, governments and voters. As a result we discover a consistent behavior of the lobbies over the cycle that boils down to some kind of non-aggression pact between the lobbies and the governments irrespective of their political alignments.

Mancur Olson's theory of the decline of nations is path-breaking in political economics. It has been tested cross-sectionally in numerous empirical studies. We survey the existing results briefly, with a special focus on studies using the number of lobbies as an exogenous variable. Using data from the period 1973-2006, we then present the field's first time-series analysis of the effects of the number of interest groups on the German lobby list and macroeconomic performance, gauged in terms of economic growth and inflation. The number of interest groups (as a proxy for their influence) is shown to have an important impact on macrovariables: Interest group activity significantly leads to a decline in the growth rate and a rise in the inflation rate.

Taking Macur Olson´s theory of the decline of nations as pathbreaking in this field we develop a formal model of the behavior of interest groups and their interaction to win some deeper insights into the interior mechanics of the interest-group-state. Followed by a brief survey of empirical studies testing Olson´s theory, we at the first time in the literature present a time-series analysis of data from the German lobby-list and estimate macro-variables as economic growth and inflation using data on the number of interest groups between 1973 and 2006. Based on these theoretical and empirical results we conclude our study with some integrative reflections on the future of interest groups and the nation-state under the pressure of globalization and a footloose new economy