MARKET STRUCTURE AND POLITICAL INFLUENCE: NEW DATA ON POLITICAL EXPENDITURES, ACTIVITY, AND SUCCESS

This paper utilizes new data to evaluate the determinants of thc political influence of thirty-five manufacturing industries on the U.S. Congress during 1976-80. Several tneasures of itifluence serve to distill-guish between political activity and success. Seller concentration and geopolitical dispersion increase both activity and succe.ss, but neither industry size nor leading-firm size proves significant. We test whether political expenditures facilitate obtaining the favors conferred on an i n-dustry by its market structure or by influence independent of that strur-ture; statistical inference strongly confirms both roles. Economists who pursue the consequences of market organization have now reached beyond the narrowly economic to the social and political realms. Downs (1957) and later writers have supplied an inventory of attractive economic models of political behavior which have yielded testable hypotheses about the effects of market and enterprise structures on political influence. Unfortunately, these empirical tests all suffer several serious deficiencies. In this study we use new data to avoid or miti