Since its origins in the 1950s, the notion of bounded rationality has been incorporated into economic theory using an array of methodological approaches. This paper presents a taxonomy by which these approaches can be categorized and understood, evaluating each approach against a range of important criteria. At a time when the foundations of economic theory are being re-examined, this paper should be viewed as a first step towards an assessment of the appropriate role that this more realistic view of cognition should take in different areas of economic theory, and also of the desirable characteristics of models that incorporate it.

The common agency model is among the most productive economic frameworks of recent times, generating important results in the analysis of political influence, industrial organization and public goods provision. This paper presents a survey of the applications of the common agency model to issues of political influence, examining the applications and their results. It also discusses a number of the weaknesses of this literature, weaknesses that open up important avenues of further research in the directions of interest group formation, the nature of lobbying, the political system, behavioural demands and empirical analysis. Keywords. Common agency; Political influence Origins and TaxonomyThe model of common agency-in which the behaviour of a single agent is influenced by multiple principals-can be counted among the most productive economic frameworks of recent times. Its properties have been subjected to a range of theoretical examinations, it has been extended in a number of fruitful directions, and it has generated important results in a diverse array of applications: from the study of a firm's internal organizational structure (Costa et al., 2005), for example, to that of national harvest stock regulation (Boyce, 2010). The applications of the model can be grouped into three categories: studies of political influence, industrial organization and public goods provision (as illustrated in Fig. 1). The first of these accounts for the greatest part of the common agency literature, and so is the primary focus of the survey presented here. What follows, then, is a survey of the many important results generated by applications of the common agency model to issues of political influence, but also of its weaknesses, which relate to the assumptions usually made about interest group formation, the nature of lobbying, the political system and the behaviour of players, and also to its empirical support.There were very few models of common agency before the two seminal papers by Bernheim and Whinston in 1986, and those that did exist were narrowly focused. For example, Bernheim and Whinston (1985) analyse a specific model of marketing agents, Baron (1985) considers the regulation of non-localized externalities and Braverman and Stiglitz (1982) propose a model of sharecropping in which farmers are responsible to landlords and creditors.Since 1986 the common agency model has been increasingly employed, and in three general formulations: static common agency, sequential common agency and dynamic common agency (also illustrated in Fig. 1). The first of these analyse situations in which principals assert their influence on the agent simultaneously, and this interaction occurs only once. The second examines situations in which the agent contracts with one principal at a time, and does so only once. And the third addresses situations in which the principals and the agent interact repeatedly over time. The majority of works that apply the common agency model in studies of political influence adopt the static framework, and so it is ...

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