Using firm level data from the U.S. steel industry, we find that lobbying for import protection is habit forming, as suggested in the rent-seeking literature. Controlling for firm performance and other factors, past lobbying increases the likelihood of current lobbying in our full sample....

Using U.S. steel firm data, we find that lobbying for import protection appears to be habit forming. To identify heterogeneity in lobbying behavior among firms, we use an expectation-maximization algorithm to sort our firms into groups with different propensities to lobby, and estimate the...