Eashwar Nagaraj

Political economy, corporate taxation, professional labor markets. PhD in Accounting, University of Florida. On the 2026-2027 academic job market.

[Eashwar Nagaraj @eashwarnagaraj]

🚨Early version of my JMP! 🚨

To what extent is the contact between corporate lobbyists and federal government officials publicly disclosed?

In other words, how big is the market for "shadow lobbying"?

The Lobbying Disclosure Act mandates quarterly disclosure of lobbying "contacts" subject to many caveats. Watchdogs have long complained about lacunae in the LDA, but there is little evidence of the size of shadow lobbying market.

In my JMP, I use 4.5 trillion pings from 179 million smartphones spatially merged to building shapefiles and observe movement between lobbyists' offices, corporate headquarter buildings, and the federal government in Washington DC.

See below: movement of lobbyists from corporate HQs to federal government buildings:

[Eashwar Nagaraj @eashwarnagaraj]

@HemanthBharatha You’re absolutely right —

[roon @tszzl]

@HaydnBelfield I just kind of stare off into the distance these days

[Eashwar Nagaraj @eashwarnagaraj]

@OxfordFrom What’s the control group for these firms

[Jason Harrison @nominalthoughts]

@AlexGodofsky Time to re-watch andor

[Eashwar Nagaraj @eashwarnagaraj]

Overheard with (new) wife at a winery near Napa:
Guide (British guy, 60+): what brings you guys here?
Customer (Vineyard Vines polo, mid 30s): So I asked Gemini and it said y’all were one of the better small batch shops
Guide: ah, very good

[Nicholas Decker @captgouda24]

Math grad student friend comments on the recent Erdős proof.

[Eashwar Nagaraj @eashwarnagaraj]

showed her my sample size

[Eashwar Nagaraj @eashwarnagaraj]

@Tyler_Menzer @SLU_Official @MarcusOwen5 @IrlbeckSteve If they didn’t buy it, at least they didn’t let me know

[Eashwar Nagaraj @eashwarnagaraj]

At the Geospatial Business Analytics Conference @SLU_Official trying to convince @MarcusOwen5, @IrlbeckSteve and the audience that shadow lobbying is pervasive.

Full paper here: https://t.co/vGzMArWMhG

[Eashwar Nagaraj @eashwarnagaraj]

@lukestein @IrlbeckSteve discussed my paper at a conference in St. Louis recently and this was his third slide lmao

[Eashwar Nagaraj @eashwarnagaraj]

True ball knowledge

[⑆Luke Stein⑈ @lukestein]

(Also, he was appropriately scandalized that I didn’t have a preferred IPL team and if you find yourself in the same situation driving somewhere with Eashwar, you *will* wind up a CSK fan)

[Eashwar Nagaraj @eashwarnagaraj]

Luke is such a mensch for remembering a conversation from more than a year ago and for giving me a shout out. @lukestein - thank you for this + for the ride back to Boston btw!

[⑆Luke Stein⑈ @lukestein]

I spent a fantastic few hours with Eashwar driving back from @IrlbeckSteve’s Bretton Woods Finance/Accounting Conference

Eashwar’s a deep thinker and a great interlocutor. I bet he’d make an amazing colleague.

[Eashwar Nagaraj @eashwarnagaraj]

@HemanthBharatha <3

[Eashwar Nagaraj @eashwarnagaraj]

🚨Early version of my JMP! 🚨

To what extent is the contact between corporate lobbyists and federal government officials publicly disclosed?

In other words, how big is the market for "shadow lobbying"?

The Lobbying Disclosure Act mandates quarterly disclosure of lobbying "contacts" subject to many caveats. Watchdogs have long complained about lacunae in the LDA, but there is little evidence of the size of shadow lobbying market.

In my JMP, I use 4.5 trillion pings from 179 million smartphones spatially merged to building shapefiles and observe movement between lobbyists' offices, corporate headquarter buildings, and the federal government in Washington DC.

See below: movement of lobbyists from corporate HQs to federal government buildings:

[Eashwar Nagaraj @eashwarnagaraj]

@JohnRuf6 😂

[Eashwar Nagaraj @eashwarnagaraj]

@elisaxchen quite easy in academia lmao

[Eashwar Nagaraj @eashwarnagaraj]

@FeralPHunter you mean hope and this is essential to human flourishing

[Eashwar Nagaraj @eashwarnagaraj]

@Tyler_Menzer @TheSalonDon Either airlines/credit cards are successful businesses because of reward points or they help the average person save money over time. Both can’t be true imo

[Eashwar Nagaraj @eashwarnagaraj]

Thanks to the @TaxFoundation @EconoWill @ahardtospell for hosting me for a talk today! In my JMP I use the 2019 Tax Prom as a validation test for my identification of lobbyists' cellphones. You can see devices labelled "lobbyists" start spiking at 6-7pm when the Tax Prom started in the National Building Museum on Nov 21, 2019. Full paper here: https://t.co/kTJkSHMjyk

[Eashwar Nagaraj @eashwarnagaraj]

🚨Early version of my JMP! 🚨

To what extent is the contact between corporate lobbyists and federal government officials publicly disclosed?

In other words, how big is the market for "shadow lobbying"?

The Lobbying Disclosure Act mandates quarterly disclosure of lobbying "contacts" subject to many caveats. Watchdogs have long complained about lacunae in the LDA, but there is little evidence of the size of shadow lobbying market.

In my JMP, I use 4.5 trillion pings from 179 million smartphones spatially merged to building shapefiles and observe movement between lobbyists' offices, corporate headquarter buildings, and the federal government in Washington DC.

See below: movement of lobbyists from corporate HQs to federal government buildings:

[Eashwar Nagaraj @eashwarnagaraj]

Great question! LB&I campaigns are led by practice areas and are announced & launched on specific dates unbeknownst to the firms under audit. In my paper, I use three different campaigns as event studies against control groups of other large firms under tax audits and look at within-firm variation in the weeks before and after campaign selection. Within the same firm, across the 16 weeks around the campaigns, there is little that can confound the lobbying of the IRS. I also do falsification tests against other lobbying destinations + examine three types of lobbyists. Please take a look at the paper here: https://t.co/kTJkSHMjyk