This paper develops a game-theoretic model of lobbying in which a politician sells access to interest groups. The politician sets an access fee, or the minimum contribution necessary to secure access, and an interest group that pays this fee can share verifiable evidence in favor of its...

A decision maker must divide a resource between multiple agents. The decision maker prefers to award the resource to the most-qualified agents, but he is initially uncertain about agent qualifications. Although he can learn about qualifications by granting the agents “access (e.g., by taking...

A decision maker must divide a prize between multiple agents. The prize may be divisible (e.g., a budget, pork-barrel spending) in which case he prefers to award larger shares of the prize to relatively more-qualified agents, or it may be non-divisible (e.g., jobs, college admissions) in which...