Why Do Some Firms Give? Why Do Some Give a Lot?: High-Tech PACs, 1977-1996

This article employs Heckman selection models to explore the determinants of corporate PAC formation and PAC size and how these determinants have changed over time. While the findings suggest that high-tech firms use PACs to seek rents from government, internal organizational politics influence their behavior as well. I also find that the effect of some independent variables, including firm size, susceptibility to regulation, and R&D spending, changed significantly over the two-decade span encompassed in the data, peaking in influence in the mid-1980s. The quantitative analysis is supplemented by interview data that point to the existence of a political "arms control" process among some market competitors.