Research

Working Papers

Local Externalities and Lobbying Strategies: The Case of Airbnb (job market paper)

Abstract:  This paper examines how a peer-to-peer digital platform’s lobbying strategy reflects the externalities associated with its local economic footprint across political boundaries. Drawing on past research on non-market strategy, I predict an inverted-U relationship between a platform’s local geographical concentration and the intensity of its lobbying activity. As a platform grows in an area, it garners local support among its local users and other stakeholders, creating incentives for lobbying policymakers to promote favorable policies. However, the platform faces higher stakeholder resistance in districts where its operations expand beyond a certain threshold due to the increased negative spillovers of its economic footprint. This reduces the incentives for lobbying as it is more difficult for the platform to influence policymakers in those areas. I further argue that platforms lobby less where they face local market competition from traditional industry incumbents. I find support for my predictions using a sample of lobbying activity by Airbnb and a coalition of community advocates and labor unions in Toronto, Canada. 

Lobbying Access to Senior Federal Bureaucrats: Evidence from Canada

Abstract: In this study, I conduct a series of empirical tests to explore how firms' prior contacts with senior-ranking elected officials and bureaucrats influence their lobbying behaviors. Specifically, I examine whether firms that have previously met with a senior minister are more likely to lobby an incumbent senior bureaucrat, and vice versa, once the former official takes office within that department. My empirical analysis currently focuses on a sample of organizations that lobbied the Canadian Federal Department of Innovation, Science, and Economic Development (ISED). I exploit exogenous variation in changes in ministers, deputy ministers (DMs), and associate/assistant deputy ministers (ADMs) from 2008 to 2023, and I find support for a bottom-up channel of access.

Corporate Political Obfuscation - with Adam Fremeth and Brandon Schaufele

Abstract: This study examines the relationship between market competition and aggregate political activity at the industry-level. We introduce a theoretical framework that serves to explain the observed positive correlation between industry size and corporate political activity. In more competitive industries, firms may strategically take advantage of policy complexity and the limited rationality of policymakers in order to shift their attention to different dimensions of a policy issue, making political activity appear noisy at the industry-level. We refer to this incentive as “corporate political obfuscation”. We provide evidence for our prediction using data on the ideological positions and campaign contributions of executives and directors of U.S. Fortune 500 companies.

The Industrial Organization of Federal Lobbying in Canada

Abstract: In an effort to better understand the landscape of federal lobbying in Canada, I explore a large database containing detailed information on the lobbying registrations and communications of over 12,000 organizations. I investigate the cross-industry amount of lobbying, the concentration and organization of lobbying within industries, as well as the organization of government relations (GR) consulting firms and their lobbyists. The aim of this paper is (1) to provide descriptive evidence on the structure and organization of federal lobbying in Canada, and (2) to highlight a series of potential research questions that could be explored in future research.