Politics of Randomness

Arbeitspapier

The main drawback of the public-policy contest is that the notion of contest success function, a crucial component of the contest model, does not have micro-foundations and, therefore, the random behavior of the government seems ad-hoc. In the present paper we propose a partial micro-foundation for the public-policy contest. The possible rationalization of random government behavior is illustrated in the case of the all-pay auction and Tullock's lottery logit functions. We also clarify how stake asymmetry, lobbying-skill asymmetry and return to lobbying effort determine the relative desirability, from the government's point of view, of these CSFs

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: CESifo Working Paper ; No. 803

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft
• Subject: interest groups ; policy makers ; lobbying ; public-policy contests ; contest success function ; rationalization of random government's behavior

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Epstein, Gil S. ; Nitzan, Shmuel
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo)
• (where): Munich
• (when): 2002

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/76315
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:45 AM CET