A Note on Lobbying a Legislature

Résumé

We study a simple in?uence game, in which a lobby tries to manipulate the decision of a legislature via monetary offers to one or more members. We compute the minimum budget needed for the lobby to pass the bill and the distribution of this budget between the legislators. We also show the connection of the problem to the combinatorial optimization.

Mots-clés

Legislative lobbying; Combinatorial optimization; Knapsack problem;

Codes JEL

C61: Optimization Techniques • Programming Models • Dynamic Analysis
D71: Social Choice • Clubs • Committees • Associations
D72: Political Processes: Rent-Seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior