Working Papers

• Interest Group Influence on Policy Proposals and Passage (Job Market Paper)
  Abstract: Interest groups influence policy outcomes by shaping the content of policy proposals and by affecting whether proposals become law. How do groups decide whether to engage in either or both of these activities, and how does their behavior depend on opposing groups? I study a two-stage policymaking model in which a proposing legislator either accepts a policy proposal from an interest group or selects their own, costly proposal. Given a proposal, the aligned and a misaligned interest group engage in an all-pay lobbying contest to determine whether the proposal becomes law or the status quo stays in place. I show an aligned group selects a proposal accepted by the legislator when facing weak opposition, but selects out of proposing when facing strong opposition. As a result, an (equilibrium) proposal from the group becomes law with high probability, while (equilibrium) proposals originating with the legislator are likely to fail. The model provides a novel, selection-based explanation consistent with empirical patterns of interest group activity in policymaking.
• Electoral Competition into Collective Policymaking (with Gleason Judd)
  Abstract: Elections determine who holds office, while collective institutions govern how winners shape policy. We study a game-theoretic model to understand how policymaking institutions affect electoral competition into collective bodies. In centrist constituencies, the party with weaker proposal rights is favored to win. This partisan balancing emerges through party strategy alone, regardless of voter sophistication. In partisan-leaning constituencies, the constituency-aligned party is favored. These party strongholds arise even without intrinsic partisan attachments of voters. Stronger extremist proposal rights increase candidate polarization in partisan-leaning constituencies but not necessarily in centrist ones, while voter sophistication always decreases polarization. Our framework addresses prominent empirical puzzles: why majority parties consistently underperform electorally while maintaining procedural advantages, and why competition for majority control can heighten candidate polarization in competitive districts.
• Legislative Policy Staff and Informational Lobbying
  Abstract: Legislators require policy information to cast informed votes. Such information can be supplied by (i) outside interest groups, or (ii) expert policy staff hired by legislators. How do incentives for a legislator to hire policy staff depend on the availability of information from outside groups? To study this question, I analyze an informational lobbying model. A policymaker chooses whether to hire expert staff, who provide an informative signal. An interest group observes the staff hiring decision, but not the generated signal, and chooses whether to provide a costly, verifiable report to the policymaker. Compared to a model where information provision by the group is precluded, the policymaker?s choice of staff hiring may differ in two ways: the interest group?s presence negatively affect staff investment when strategic non-investment by the policymaker induces the group to provide information (substitution), and the group?s presence can positively affect the policymaker?s staff investment, which may be driven by complementarity, balancing, or ensnarement motives. I discuss how these findings relate to trends in resource allocation towards expert policy staff by members of Congress and potential reforms.