Inside the revolving door: Campaign finance, lobbying meetings and public contracts. An investigation for Argentina

FREILLE, SEBASTIÁN; MONCARZ, PEDRO; AVRAMOVICH, MARIA CECILIA; SOFFIETTI, PABLO

Buenos Aires

Taller; Taller RED - Corrupción y Políticas para su Prevención; 2018

CAF Banco de Desarrollo de America Latina y Universidad Torcuato di Tella (UTDT)

This paper explores the relationship between political influence activities byinterest groups and benefits obtained in the form of public contracts. We propose an electoral competition model where interest groups make ex-ante campaign contributions to candidates and ex-post lobbying contributions (efforts). Campaign contributions are useful to bias the election result although an aggresive campaign fight encourages interest groups to concentrate in lobbying activities. Using a novel and unique dataset at the individual level, we find that lobbying meetings are positively correlated with public contract amount and the probability of obtaining a contract. This results holds when controlling for unobservedheterogeneity. Campaign contributions are not significantly related to eitherpublic contract amount or the probability of winning contracts.