Full Description
The last survey of the rent-seeking literature took place more than a decade ago. Since that time a great deal of new research has been published in a wide variety of journals, covering a wide variety of topics. The scope of that research is such that very few researchers will be familiar with more than a small part of contemporary research, and very few libraries will be able to provide access to the full breadth of that research. This two-volume collection provides an extensive overview of 40 years of rent-seeking research. The volumes include the foundational papers, many of which have not been in print for two decades. They include recent game-theoretic analyses of rent-seeking contests and also appUcations of the rent-seeking concepts and methodology to economic regulation, international trade policy, economic history, poUtical com petition, and other social phenomena. The new collection is more than twice as large as any previous collection and both updates and extends the earUer surveys. Volume I contains previously pubhshed research on the theory of rent-seeking contests, which is an important strand of contemporary game theory. Volume II contains previously published research that uses the theory of rent-seeking to an alyze a broad range of public policy and social science topics. The editors spent more than a year assembling possible papers and, although the selections fill two large volumes, many more papers could have been included.
Contents
Forty Years of Research on Rent Seeking: An Overview.- Forty Years of Research on Rent Seeking: An Overview.- Regulation and Protection.- The Social Costs of Monopoly and Regulation.- The Social Costs of Monopoly Power.- Misleading Calculations of The Social Costs of Monopoly Power.- Declining Industries and Political-Support Protectionist Motives.- Domestic Politics, Foreign Interests, and International Trade Policy.- Protection for Sale.- Economic Development and Growth.- The Political Economy of the Rent-Seeking Society.- Foreign aid and rent-seeking.- The political economy of coffee, dictatorship, and genocide.- Why Is Rent-Seeking So Costly to Growth?.- Political culture and economic decline.- Institutions and the Resource Curse.- The King Never Emigrates.- Immigration as a challenge to the Danish welfare state?.- Political and Legal Institutions.- Rent-seeking aspects of political advertising.- Rent extraction and rent creation in the economic theory of regulation.- Rigging the lobbying process: An application of the all-pay auction.- Caps on Political Lobbying.- Inverse Campaigning.- On the efficient organization of trials.- Legal expenditure as a rent-seeking game.- Rent-seeking through litigation: adversarial and inquisitorial systems compared.- Comparative Analysis Of Litigation Systems: An Auction-Theoretic Approach.- Institutions and history.- Rent Seeking, Noncompensated Transfers, and Laws of Succession.- A model of institutional formation within a rent seeking environment.- The 2002 Winter Olympics scandal: Rent-seeking and committees.- Mercantilism as a Rent-Seeking Society.- Efficient Transactors or Rent- Seeking Monopolists? The Rationale for Early Chartered Trading Companies.- The open constitution and its enemies: Competition, rent seeking, and the rise of the modern state.- Illegal Economic Activities and Purges in a Soviet-Type Economy: A Rent-Seeking Perspective.- Rent seeking and taxation in the Ancient Roman Empire.- The Firm.- "Hard" and "Soft" Budget Constraint.- Workers as Insurance: Anticipated Government Assistance and Factor Demand.- Rent Seeking and Rent Dissipation in State Enterprises.- Discouraging Rivals: Managerial Rent-Seeking and Economic Inefficiencies.- The Dark Side of Internal Capital Markets: Divisional Rent-Seeking and Inefficient Investment.- Allies as rivals: internal and external rent seeking.- Efficiency Wages Versus Insiders and Outsiders.- Monitoring rent-seeking managers: advantages of diffuse ownership.- Inside versus outside ownership: a political theory of the firm.- Societal Relations.- Efficient Status Seeking: Externalities, and the Evolution of Status Games.- A Signaling Explanation for Charity.- Competition for Sainthood and the Millennial Church.- Publishing as prostitution? — Choosing between one's own ideas and academic success.- Ideological conviction and persuasion in the rent-seeking society.- Political economy and political correctness.
