Essays on strategic advocacy and influence in rulemaking
department or school: Arts, Faculty of
department or school: Vancouver School of Economics
data provider: DSpace
degree campus: UBCV
creator: Hackinen, Bradley Alexander
issued: 2019-09-12T16:06:06Z
issued: 2019
related degree: Doctor of Philosophy - PhD
degree grantor: University of British Columbia
description: Politicians and regulators rely on external expertise when setting policies, providing an opportunity for interest groups to influence government policy with persuasive information. This process forms the foundation of many models of lobbying and special interest politics, but is very difficult to study empirically. I use data from U.S. Federal rulemaking process to create new measures of influence, revealing that U.S. corporations use charitable donations to non-profits to influence regulators, and opening up possibilities for future research. In Chapters 1 and 2, I present co-authored research on the relationship between strategic advocacy in rulemaking and corporate philanthropy. For-profit corporations and non-profit entities are active in the rulemaking process and are arguably expected to provide independent viewpoints. However, non-profits also receive grants from firms with an interest in the outcomes of the regulatory process. Chapter 1 shows that corporations give large amounts of money to non-profits that participate in the rulemaking process and that, shortly after a firm donates to a non-profit, the non-profit is more likely to comment on rules for which the firm has also provided a comment. Chapter 2 extends the study of firms and non-profits to include the text content of regulatory comments, and the regulators response in the final rule. We find that, when a firm comments on a rule, the comments by non-profits that recently received grants from the firm’s foundation are systematically closer in content similarity to the firm’s own comments than to those submitted by other non-profits commenting on that rule. And, when a firm comments on a new rule, the discussion of the final rule is more similar to the firm’s comments when the firm’s recent grantees also comment on that rule. These patterns suggest that corporations strategically deploy charitable grants to induce non-profit grantees to make comments that favor their benefactors. In Chapter 3, I pre…
aggregated CHO: https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/71665
note: Essays on Strategic Advocacy andInfluence in RulemakingbyBradley Alexander HackinenB.Sc., The University of Victoria, 2012A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OFTHE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OFDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHYinThe Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies(Economics)THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA(Vancouver)September 2019© Bradley Alexander Hackinen 2019The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate andPostdoctoral Studies for acceptance, the dissertation entitled:Essays on Strategic Advocacy and Influence in Rulemakingsubmitted by Bradley Alexander Hackinen in partial fulfillment of the requirements forthe degree of Doctorate of Philosophyin EconomicsExamining Committee:Matilde Bombardini, Vancouver School of EconomicsCo-supervisorFrancesco Trebbi, Vancouver School of EconomicsCo-supervisorMarit Rehavi, Vancouver School of EconomicsUniversity ExaminerWie Cui, Peter A. Allard School of LawUniversity ExaminerDecio Coviello, HEC MontrealExternal ExaminerAdditional Supervisory Committee Members:Kevin Milligan, Vancouver School of EconomicsSupervisory Committee MemberiiAbstractPoliticians and regulators rely on external expertise when setting policies, providing an opportunityfor interest groups to influence government policy with persuasive information. This process formsthe foundation of many models of lobbying and special interest politics, but is very difficult to studyempirically. I use data from U.S. Federal rulemaking process to create new measures of influence,revealing that U.S. corporations use charitable donations to non-profits to influence regulators, andopening up possibilities for future research.In Chapters 1 and 2, I present co-authored research on the relationship between strategic advocacyin rulemaking and corporate philanthropy. For-profit corporations and non-profit entities are activein the rulemaking process and are arguably expected to provide independent viewpoints. However,non-pr…
has type: Thesis/Dissertation
date issued: 2019-11
is shown at: 10.14288/1.0380867
language: eng
degree discipline: Economics
provider: Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
publisher: University of British Columbia
rights: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
rights URI: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
scholar level: Graduate
type: Text
identifier URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/71665