Efficient Rent-Seeking

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Release : 2001-01-31
Genre : Business & Economics
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Book Rating : 424/5 ( reviews)

Efficient Rent-Seeking - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Efficient Rent-Seeking write by Alan Lockard. This book was released on 2001-01-31. Efficient Rent-Seeking available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Some time ago one of the editors (Gordon Tullock) stumbled on a paradox in the competition for rents. He asked a previous research assistant (William Hunter) to work out some examples and gave a seminar on it. For reasons he cannot recall (but probably bad) he titled his talk `Efficient Rent Seeking'. As Editor of Public Choice he was able to publish without a referee. Incidentally, The Journal of Political Economy had turned it down on the grounds that the economy could not be that chaotic, and hence there must be something wrong even if the referee couldn't put his finger on it. There followed a long series of articles, mainly in Public Choice, in which various distinguished scholars proposed solutions to the paradox. The editor responded by finding fault with these solutions. In this case the editor was arguing against interest. He, like the referee for the JPE, believed that the market works, if not perfectly, at least very well. Nevertheless, the paradox resisted and persisted. It was like the paradox of the liar, and indeed in some cases did show exactly that paradox. Eventually everyone, including the editor, grew tired of the matter and the discussion sort of wound down, although it could not be said that it was either solved or even abated. It also began to appear that it had a much larger scope than just competitive rent seeking. Any contest for wealth, privilege, or prestige in which the chances of winning were affected by the investment of the contestants would appear to be subject to the same problem. The sum of the investments in equilibrium might be much less than the prize or much more. It depended on the structure of the contest, but the range of structures seemed to include almost all economic competition. Clearly, from the standpoint of economics, this was a distressing conclusion. Perhaps the whole vast structure of economic analysis rested on faulty foundations. Speaking frankly, neither of the editors thinks the situation is that desperate. We feel that there is a logical solution, even if we do not know what it is. The purpose of this volume is to attempt to get economists to turn to the problem and, hopefully, solve the paradox. We present here a substantial portion of the literature on the matter. We hope that the readers will be stimulated to think about the problem and, even more, we hope they will be able to solve it.

Efficient Rent-Seeking

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Release : 2013-03-14
Genre : Business & Economics
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Book Rating : 552/5 ( reviews)

Efficient Rent-Seeking - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Efficient Rent-Seeking write by Alan Lockard. This book was released on 2013-03-14. Efficient Rent-Seeking available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Some time ago one of the editors (Gordon Tullock) stumbled on a paradox in the competition for rents. He asked a previous research assistant (William Hunter) to work out some examples and gave a seminar on it. For reasons he cannot recall (but probably bad) he titled his talk `Efficient Rent Seeking'. As Editor of Public Choice he was able to publish without a referee. Incidentally, The Journal of Political Economy had turned it down on the grounds that the economy could not be that chaotic, and hence there must be something wrong even if the referee couldn't put his finger on it. There followed a long series of articles, mainly in Public Choice, in which various distinguished scholars proposed solutions to the paradox. The editor responded by finding fault with these solutions. In this case the editor was arguing against interest. He, like the referee for the JPE, believed that the market works, if not perfectly, at least very well. Nevertheless, the paradox resisted and persisted. It was like the paradox of the liar, and indeed in some cases did show exactly that paradox. Eventually everyone, including the editor, grew tired of the matter and the discussion sort of wound down, although it could not be said that it was either solved or even abated. It also began to appear that it had a much larger scope than just competitive rent seeking. Any contest for wealth, privilege, or prestige in which the chances of winning were affected by the investment of the contestants would appear to be subject to the same problem. The sum of the investments in equilibrium might be much less than the prize or much more. It depended on the structure of the contest, but the range of structures seemed to include almost all economic competition. Clearly, from the standpoint of economics, this was a distressing conclusion. Perhaps the whole vast structure of economic analysis rested on faulty foundations. Speaking frankly, neither of the editors thinks the situation is that desperate. We feel that there is a logical solution, even if we do not know what it is. The purpose of this volume is to attempt to get economists to turn to the problem and, hopefully, solve the paradox. We present here a substantial portion of the literature on the matter. We hope that the readers will be stimulated to think about the problem and, even more, we hope they will be able to solve it.

Efficient Rent-Seeking

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Release : 2014-09-01
Genre :
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Book Rating : 560/5 ( reviews)

Efficient Rent-Seeking - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Efficient Rent-Seeking write by Alan Lockard. This book was released on 2014-09-01. Efficient Rent-Seeking available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle.

The Rent-seeking Society

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Release : 2005
Genre : Business & Economics
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The Rent-seeking Society - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Rent-seeking Society write by Gordon Tullock. This book was released on 2005. The Rent-seeking Society available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. The fifth volume in The Selected Works of Gordon Tullock consists of six parts, each part expounding on a separate component of the field. Part 1, "Rent Seeking: An Overview," brings together two papers that focus on problems of defining rent-seeking behavior and outline the nature of the ongoing research program in a historical perspective. Part 2, "More on Efficient Rent Seeking," contains four contributions in which Tullock elaborates on his 1980 article on efficient rent seeking. Part 3, "The Environments of Rent Seeking," consists of eight papers that collectively display the breadth of the rent-seeking concept. Part 4, "The Cost of Rent Seeking," comprises seven papers that address several important issues about the cost of rent seeking to society as a whole. Part 5 is Tullock's short monograph Exchanges and Contracts, in which he develops a systematic theory of exchange in political markets. In Part 6, "Future Directions for Rent-Seeking Research," Tullock focuses on the importance of information in the political marketplace. This work has been carefully constructed to build on the inaugural volume in this collection and to ease students through the field in a clear and concise manner. Gordon Tullock is Professor Emeritus of Law at George Mason University, where he was Distinguished Research Fellow in the Center for Study of Public Choice and University Professor of Law and Economics. He also taught at the University of South Carolina, the University of Virginia, Rice University, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and the University of Arizona. In 1966 he founded the journal that became Public Choice and remained its editor until 1990. Charles K. Rowley was Duncan Black Professor of Economics at George Mason University and a Senior Fellow of the James M. Buchanan Center for Political Economy at George Mason University. He was also General Director of the Locke Institute.

The Political Economy of Rent-Seeking

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Release : 1988-01-31
Genre : Business & Economics
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Book Rating : 419/5 ( reviews)

The Political Economy of Rent-Seeking - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Political Economy of Rent-Seeking write by Charles Rowley. This book was released on 1988-01-31. The Political Economy of Rent-Seeking available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. It is now twenty years since the concept of rent-seeking was first devised by Gordon Tullock, though he was not responsible for coining the phrase itself. His initial insight has burgeoned over two decades into a major research program which has had an impact not only on public choice, but also on the related disciplines of economics, political science, and law and economics. The reach of the insight has proved to be universal, with relevance not just for the democracies, but also, and arguably more important, for all forms of autocracy, irrespective of ideological com plexion. It is not surprising, therefore, that this volume is the third edited publication dedicated specifically to scholarship into rent-seeking behavior. The theory of rent-seeking bridges normative and positive analyses of state action. In its normative dimension, rent-seeking scholarship has expanded, enlivened, in some respects turned on its head, the traditional welfare analyses of such features of modern economics as monopoly, externalities, public goods, and trade protection devices. In its positive dimension, rent-seeking contributions have provided an important analy tical perspective from which to understand and to predict the behavior of politicians, interest groups and bureaucrats, the media and the academy within the political market place. This bridge between normative and positive elements of analysis is invaluable in facilitating an understanding of and evaluating the costs of state activity within a consistent paradigm.