We develop a model of policymaking in which a politician decides how much expertise to acquire or how informed to become about issues before interest groups engage in monetary lobbying. For a range of issues, the policymaker prefers to remain clueless about the merits of reform, even when...

We develop a game theoretic model of informational lobbying between two interest groups and a politician, in which the politician can require political contributions in exchange for access. The analysis considers three claims: (1) the rich have better access to politicians than less-wealthy...

This paper develops a model of political contributions in which a politician can either sell policy favors, or sell access. Access allows interest groups to share hard information with the politician in support of their preferred policy. Here selling access maximizes policy utility, while...