Guilt by Association?
Exploring the Effects of Business Association
Activity on Economic Growth
Gabriel Mattera
Faculty Advisor: Professor Sami Alpanda
Submitted to the Department of Economics at Amherst College in
partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts
with Distinction
April 22, 2005
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Acknowledgments
First and foremost among those to whom I owe a great debt is my advisor, Professor
Sami Alpanda.
As fellow neophytes, he to the process of thesis advising, I to the process
of thesis writing, I like to think that we both had something to teach the other.
Unfortunately, I know that this is simply not true.
The theoretical insights, econometric
understanding and general guidance he bestowed upon me vastly outweigh anything I
could hope to offer in return.
I wish to thank him especially for his patience across many
weekly meetings, and for his tolerance of my proclivity towards independent action.
The
greatest teachers, I like to think, are those that lead their students to discover things on
their own.
I would also like to sincerely thank Ashfaq Qadri for his honest and straightforward
comments on early drafts of the manuscript.
It is truly a noble friend who willingly
offers to take time out of his busy day to read tens of pages of dry undergraduate
economics.
Zeina Nasr deserves special mention.
Without her anxious reminders of the impending
April deadline, I would never have become nervous enough to do the intense work
necessary to finish this project in a timely manner.
Thanks goes also to Ngoc Trang, whose conversation and joking in the Economics
Computer Laboratory was a burst of fresh air during the writing process.
Finally, I must acknowledge both of my parents.
Throughout my life they have
constantly stressed the value of a full education and the pleasures of a curious mind.
Without their influence and support I would not be at Amherst College.
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INTRODUCTION
Business associations are a natural phenomenon in modern, democratic states.
In
so far as firms and individuals can benefit from sharing professional experience with each
other, or from uniting to pursue a common economic aim, it stands to reason that
businesses will always have an interest in joining together.
The issue, though, is how this
activity affects overall social welfare.
Many other private interest organizations pose a similar question.
What partly
distinguishes business associations from these others is that they are a fluid and varied
category, representing a range of groups including, but not limited to, local professional
clubs, national business federations, and on a grander scale the lobbying wings of
multinational corporations.
In part because of this, while interest groups as a whole have
been examined at length, there have been few attempts to isolate the effects of business
associations from the greater aggregation of private organizations.
The goal of this paper
is precisely to do that.
More specifically, it seeks to find whether or not business
associations can have a positive influence on social welfare.
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- Winter '14
