June 25, 2008 10:05 AM

Shocking News: Corporate Lobbying Pays Off

Regular readers of Roll Call and The Hill already know that corporations spend far more (probably 20 times more) on lobbying than on political contributions. And there is lots of anecdotal evidence that the right lobbyist can deliver corporate benefits worth tens, if not hundreds of times, their fee, in terms of taxes eliminated or public property swapped or no bid (no work!) contracts obtained. This fact is why the number of lobbyists has exploded, the number of earmarks in the budget massively larger, and why a handful of lobbyists and congressional aides are going to prison.

But finally, some serious academics have the proof! In a paper that is quite fun by academic standards, Parsley, Hui and Ya-Wen have published an article that pretty conclusively nails it - companies that lobby do better financially than those that do not lobby. Their conclusion is that the return is so great that the question left unanswered is why any company does not lobby.

The authors did not study the question of most interest to me - does a dollar of corporate lobbying buy more benefit than a dollar of public interest lobbying?