Shadow Lobbyists

Special interest influence via lobbying is increasingly controversial and legislative efforts to deal with this issue have centered on the principle of transparency. In this paper we evaluate the effectiveness of the current regulatory framework provided by the US Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA). Specifically, we study the role of ex-Congressional officials who join US lobbying firms in positions that could be related to lobbying activity but without officially registering as lobbyists themselves. We find that firm lobbying revenues increase significantly when these potential ‘shadow lobbyists’ join, with effects in the range of 10-20%. This shadow lobbyist revenue effect is comparable to the effect of a registered lobbyist at the median of the industry skill distribution. As such, it is challenging to reconcile the measured shadow lobbyist effect with the 20% working time threshold for registering as a lobbyist. Based on our estimates, the contribution of unregistered ex-Congressional officials could explain 4.9% of the increase in sectoral revenues, compared to 24.0% for the group of registered officials.

FDI and Global Economic Integration: A Welfare Analysis

This paper investigates the welfare impact on all member countries when nonmember countries invest in a member of an economic region, in which capital is allowed to move freely. It is shown that the nonmember investment will affects the welfare of all members despite that some members do not receive such investment directly. In general, the results depend on the relative magnitude of the tariff revenue effect, the tax revenue effect and the capital returns effect. Specific conditions for welfare change in each member country as well as the criterion for a common external tariff which ensures welfare improvement in all the member countries are derived.

Evolutionary Stages of e-Tailers and Retailers

We have studied the evolutionary stages of pure e-tailers, click & mortar (C&M) and brick & mortar (B&M) retailers for three points of time: June 1999, June 2000, and June 2001. To evaluate the dynamic stages of e-tailing business as an innovative venture, we propose four stages: exploration, breakeven, growth, and maturity. The stages are measured by the impact of revenue and income on the firm value, and a regression model is adopted to formulate the model. To empirically examine the stages of e-tailers and retailers, we have collected 14 e-tailers, 112 C&M, and 75 B&M from the U.S. stock markets. According to this study, the proposed stage model explains the evolution of pure e-tailers very meaningfully. E-tailers were in the late exploration stage in 1999, breakeven stage in 2000, and growth stage in 2001. Unlike our hypothetical expectation, the stage model could not adequately explain the effect of online business to C&M. In this regard, the impact of online channel to traditional retailers was not revolutionary. In 1999 and 2000, the primary contributing factor to firm value of C&M was income, but in 2001, it was revenue. According to this result, investors were very conservative to the risky investment on the click business of traditional retailers. However, it turned out that C&M has performed better than B&M in terms of revenue, income, income/revenue, stock price, and market capitalization. It is noteworthy that the revenue effect of C&M in 2001 was significantly higher than that of B&M.

A Note on Government Budgets

The standard pedagogical examination of government budgets includes the distinction between cyclical and structural deficits and surpluses and changes thereof. This paper extends the regular classroom analysis and graphically demonstrates that cyclical changes in the government budget can be decomposed and stated as the summation of the expenditure effect and the revenue effect.