Document de travail

Delegation, Capture and Endogenous Information Structures

Perrin Lefebvre et David Martimort

Résumé

A substantial literature has been devoted to analyzing how legislators delegate regulatory power to a more knowledgeable agency. Yet, much less attention has been paid to understand how this delegation process is shaped by the environment in which this agency operates, and more specifically by the actions of interest groups. We propose a model of regula-tory capture to assess how the distribution of information across interest groups and agencies impacts optimal delegation. Whether an interest group and his agency share information or not determines the scope for capture and how much discretion should be left to this agency in response. Whether asymmetric information reduces or increases discretion depends on the biases of the group and the agency vis-`a-vis Congress. Groups that are more aligned with Congress collect politically relevant information, while more extreme groups remain poorly informed. The information structure that endogenously emerges increases discretion under broad circumstances.

Mots-clés

Pluralistic Politics; Lobbying; Common Agency; Moral Hazard;

Codes JEL

  • D82: Asymmetric and Private Information • Mechanism Design
  • D86: Economics of Contract: Theory
  • H10: General

Remplacé par

Perrin Lefebvre et David Martimort, « Delegation, capture and endogenous information structures », Journal of Theoretical Politics, vol. 34, n° 3, 2022, p. 357–414.

Référence

Perrin Lefebvre et David Martimort, « Delegation, Capture and Endogenous Information Structures », TSE Working Paper, n° 23-1418, mars 2023.

Voir aussi

Publié dans

TSE Working Paper, n° 23-1418, mars 2023