ABSTRACT
One might suppose that, since lobbying to influence trade policy is an activity using real resources in attempts to effect income transfers, lobbying activity necessarily gives rise to a social loss. Thus Gordon Tullock (1967) proposed that:
These expenditures, which may simply offset each other to some extent, are purely wasteful from the standpoint of society as a whole; they are spent not in increasing wealth, but in attempting to transfer or resist transfer of wealth.
