Economic Concentration and Political Advocacy, 1999-2017

Abstract: The growing concentration in markets raises important questions about the political power of large firms and concentrated industries. Indeed, many scholars and activists have sounded alarms about the dangers of monopoly for democracy and have called for reforming antitrust law to consider the political implications of greater market power. But to date, there has been little systematic evidence linking increased economic concentration to democratic harms in established democracies. This paper reports on the beginnings of our effort to fill this gap by exploring the correlation between the economic concentration of an industry and the lobbying expenditures of its firms. Linking lobbying data with industry-wide and firm-specific economic data, we investigate whether lobbying expenditures have become more concentrated over time and whether this concentration in the political market is associated with concentration in economic markets. We have two primary analyses. The first is an analysis of the correlates of lobbying-expenditure concentration. The second is a case study of six dominant firms in the information technology industry. Our preliminary results are mixed but do not suggest a strong relationship between the concentration of economic and political markets. We also outline the many additional avenues of inquiry opened up by our data that we are currently pursuing.