Read Online What Keeps Money Out of Politics? (Cato Unbound Book 42013) RTF
It’s called the Tullock Paradox: If you run the numbers, the expected returns to lobbying commonly appear much larger than they ought to be. Bad behavior pays really well, and yet corporations and interest groups routinely pass on what would seem, from a coldly amoral stance, to be easy money. Rational economic actors ought to bid up the price of government favor — and thus bid down the rate of return — but real-world actors don’t do so.Why don’t we see even more money in politics? To answer that question, we have invited Fred L. Smith, founder and chairman of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a man who has spent much of his career pondering just this question, and who benefits from an insider’s view of political advocacy.To discuss with him the potential pitfalls of public choice modeling, we have invited a panel of distinguished academics: Professors Stephen Ansolabehere of Harvard University, Francesco Parisi of the University of Minnesota School of Law, and Raymond J. La Raja of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
