UC Irvine

The research presented in this dissertation addresses some of the econometric, theoretical, and empirical concerns in the field of public choice economics. The first chapter presents empirical evidence of a significant and likely causal link between the influence asserted by land-use interest groups and subsequent regulatory action. That relationship is uncovered by measuring the effects of political participation and interest group competition on economic outcomes. These results reveal that campaign contributions can be an effective rent seeking activity, but it is also the case that interest group competition greatly reduces the potential gains from political participation. Moreover, it is shown that competition often leads to a prisoners' dilemma for opposing interest groups. Those findings are in contrast to previous work. Additionally, this research illuminates the nuanced role of campaign finance restrictions and compares the marginal effects of political donations between jurisdictions with and without campaign contribution limits. The second chapter of this dissertation develops an algorithm for determining vote-trade equilibria in a simulated legislative environment in order to examine the welfare and equity effects of vote-trading. The results are then compared to two prominent theories regarding such effects. The third chapter of this dissertation uses a Markov chain Monte Carlo approach to develop and test a new method for simultaneously estimating ideal points and proposal locations in a multidimensional spatial voting model. The method developed is different from other approaches in that it allows the researcher to directly evaluate the joint-distributional qualities of voters' ideal points and proposal location parameters in the same space. Also addressed in this chapter are the identification issues associated with estimating proposal location parameters. The presented estimators are found to be consistent and have a high degree of predictive power. Although the three works described in the following chapters cover diverse subject matters within the field of public choice, they are linked by a common goal to further our understanding of the economic concerns of legislative and regulatory governance.