Insuring Rents

Bryan P. Cutsinger, Alexander Marsella, Yang Zhou
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Abstract

Economists have long recognized the need for durability-enhancing mechanisms to facilitate political exchange, but the focus has been almost entirely on mechanisms that raise the cost of reneging on bargains once they have been struck. What happens if these mechanisms fail? This paper argues that politicians have an incentive to establish an insurance-like mechanism that indemnifies interest groups whose legislatively-created benefits have been reduced. I consider the role of the Department of Justice's settlement authority in facilitating this type of transfer, and illustrate my argument by examining two recent settlements involving Citigroup and Bank of America. These settlements are notable not only because they involved the allocation of money to third-party groups who were not directly harmed by the alleged violations of federal law, but because both corporations were required to donate millions of dollars to housing counseling organizations whose subsidies Congress reduced following the 2010 midterm elections.
保险的租金
经济学家们早就认识到,有必要建立增强持久性的机制,以促进政治交流,但他们关注的焦点几乎完全放在那些一旦达成协议就会提高违约成本的机制上。如果这些机制失效了怎么办?本文认为,政治家有动机建立一种类似保险的机制,以补偿那些立法创造的利益减少的利益集团。我考虑了司法部和解机构在促进此类转移方面的作用,并通过考察花旗集团(Citigroup)和美国银行(Bank of America)最近达成的两项和解来说明我的论点。这些和解之所以引人注目,不仅因为它们涉及向第三方团体分配资金,而这些团体并没有受到所谓违反联邦法律的直接损害,还因为这两家公司都被要求向住房咨询机构捐赠数百万美元,国会在2010年中期选举后减少了对这些机构的补贴。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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