Dear colleagues, The Department of Economics cordially invites you to the WU Economics Research Seminar on Monday, May 19th, with Soumyanetra Munshi (Indian Statistical Institute) on "Lobbying and Enforcement: An Economic Exploration" Abstract: The government allocates resources to its various departments, one of which is supposed to enforce law on another. The non-enforcing department works in close proximity with an industry that is organized into a lobby and gives campaign contributions to the representatives of the ruling party forming the government. Moreover, the enforcement department utilizes the government funds to improve its enforcement mechanism to detect violations in the non-enforcing department. Under such interdependencies and interactions, this paper presents a theoretical framework to study the effect that lobbying and enforcement have on the allocation of resource. Lobbying shifts the marginal benefit of the non-lobby group, whereas enforcement changes the very nature of marginal benefits of both the groups. Enforcement, without lobbying, substantially distorts allocation away from the non-enforcing group, whereas lobbying is somewhat able to check that distortion. Date: Monday, May 19th Time: 4.30 to 6 pm (CET) Location: building D4, ground floor, D4.0.019 With best regards, Harald Oberhofer --- Univ.-Prof. Dr. Harald Oberhofer Department of Economics WU Vienna University of Economics and Business Phone: +43/1/31336-4984 Email: harald.oberhofer@wu.ac.at<mailto:harald.oberhofer@wu.ac.at> https://www.wu.ac.at/en/economics/people/oberhofer-h Austrian Institute of Economic Research (WIFO) Phone: +43/1/7982601-468 Email: harald.oberhofer@wifo.ac.at<mailto:harald.oberhofer@wifo.ac.at> http://www.wifo.ac.at/harald_oberhofer