Information is central to designing effective policy, and policy makers often rely on competing interests to separate useful from biased information. We show how this logic of virtuous competition can break down, using a new and comprehensive data set on U.S. federal regulatory rulemaking for 2003–2016. For-profit corporations and nonprofit entities are active in the rulemaking process and are arguably expected to provide independent viewpoints. Policy makers, however, may not be fully aware of the financial ties between some firms and nonprofits—grants that are legal and tax-exempt but hard to trace. We document three patterns that suggest that these grants may distort policy. First, we show that shortly after a firm donates to a nonprofit, the nonprofit is more likely to comment on rules on which the firm has also commented. Second, when a firm comments on a rule, the comments by nonprofits that recently received grants from the firm’s foundation are systematically closer in content to the firm’s own comments, relative to comments submitted by other nonprofits. Third, the final rule’s discussion by a regulator is more similar to the firm’s comments on that rule when the firm’s recent grantees also commented on it.

中文翻译：

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镜厅：企业慈善和战略倡导*

信息是设计有效政策的核心，政策制定者通常依靠相互竞争的利益来区分有用信息和有偏见的信息。我们使用 2003 年至 2016 年美国联邦监管规则制定的新的综合数据集，展示了这种良性竞争的逻辑是如何崩溃的。营利性公司和非营利实体积极参与规则制定过程，可以说是期望提供独立的观点。然而，政策制定者可能并不完全了解一些公司与非营利组织之间的财务联系——这些赠款是合法且免税但难以追踪的。我们记录了三种模式，表明这些赠款可能会扭曲政策。首先，我们表明，在一家公司向非营利组织捐款后不久，非营利组织更有可能对公司也评论过的规则发表评论。第二，当公司对规则发表评论时，与其他非营利组织提交的评论相比，最近从公司基金会获得资助的非营利组织的评论在内容上更接近于公司自己的评论。第三，监管机构对最终规则的讨论更类似于该公司最近的受让人也对该规则发表评论时对该规则的评论。