Does Private Money Buy Public Policy? Campaign Contributions and Regulatory Outcomes in Telecommunications

Abstract : To what extent can market participants affect the outcomes of regulatory policy? In this paper, we study the effects of one potential source of influence - campaign contributions - from competing interests in the local telecommunications industry, on regulatory policy decisions of state public utility commissions. Using a unique new data set, we find, in contrast to much of the literature on campaign contributions, that there is a significant effect of private money on regulatory outcomes. Indeed, this result is robust to numerous alternative specifications and persists with instrumentation. We also assess the extent of omitted variable bias that would have to exist to obviate the estimated result. We find that for our result to be spurious, omitted variables would have to explain more than five times the variation in the mix of private money as is explained by the variables included in our analysis. We consider this to be very unlikely. Institute of Governmental Studies University of California, Berkeley

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