Informational Lobbying and Access When Talk Isnt Cheap

I develop a model in which interest groups (IGs) have private, veri\u85able information in support of their preferred policy positions that in aggregate determine the set of policies that maximizes citizen welfare. An uninformed policy maker (PM) is concerned with both implementing a set of policies that maximize citizen welfare, and collecting contributions from IGs. I model the interaction between the PM and the IGs as an all-pay auction where IGs provide contributions to the PM, and the PM grants access to the groups that gave the largest contributions. The IGs with access can present their information to the policy maker before he chooses a policy set. In equilibrium, because contributions are chosen endogenously, the PM learns about the information quality of all IGs, even when he grants access to only a subset of the groups. When there is no limit to the size of contributions, the welfare maximizing policy set is implemented in equilibrium. Limiting the size of contributions strictly reduces expected citizen welfare