Common Agency in Political Economy

经济政策制定和实施的政治过程涉及几个委托代理关系。一个参与者（政党、立法机构或官僚机构）采取影响另一个参与者（选民、特殊群体或利益集团）的行动。后者（委托人）可以设计合同或激励方案来影响前者（代理人）的行为。激励有不同的形式。在游说者和政党之间的关系中，这些可以是现金支付。当选民群体是委托人，政治家是代理人时，激励就以选票承诺的形式出现。当国会是官僚监管机构的负责人时，激励措施可能包括资金或微观管理的威胁。政治代理关系的观察者注意到这些关系的一个重要特点，即存在多个同时试图影响代理行为的委托人。在美国，每个官僚机构都不断受到来自国会、法院、媒体和游说者的压力。在欧洲，几个主权国家试图影响欧盟中央决策者的决定。在这种共同代理中，各委托人提供的激励方案共同影响代理人的行为，从而影响每个委托人的回报。委托人之间这种相互作用的均衡最终决定了代理人的激励。这个项目的目的是建立理论模型来检验几个这样的“共同机构”的相互作用，并描述它们的结果。开发了一种通用方法，可以帮助构建涉及多个主体和代理选择的几个维度的可处理模型。该方法的价值是通过两个解决的例子来证明的，然后几个进一步提出的应用构成了研究议程。

The political process by which economic policy is made and implemented involves several principal-agent relationships. One participant (a political party, legislature, or a bureaucratic agency) takes some action that affects another (voters, special, or interest groups). The latter (the principal) can devise a contract or an incentive scheme to influence the actions of the former (the agent). The incentives take different forms. In the relationship between lobbyists and political parties, these can be cash payments. When groups of voters are the principals and politicians the agents, the incentives take the form of promises of votes. When the Congress is a principal for a bureaucratic regulatory agency, the incentives can consist of funding or threats of micromanagement. Observers of political agency relationships have noted an important special feature of these, namely the existence of multiple principals who simultaneously attempt to affect the actions of the agent. In the U.S., each bureaucracy is constantly under pressure from the Congress, the courts, the media, and lobbyists. In Europe, several sovereign nations attempt to influence the decisions of the European Union's central decision-makers. In such common agencies, the incentive schemes offered by the various principals jointly affect the action of the agent, and therefore the return to each principal. The equilibrium of this interaction among the principals ultimately determines the agent's incentives. The aim of this project is to construct theoretical models to examine the interaction in several such "common agencies," and characterize their outcomes. A general methodology is developed, which can help construct tractable models involving several principals and several dimensions of the agent's choice. The value of the approach is demonstrated using two solved examples, and then several further proposed applications constitute the research agenda.