Rent-seeking, noncompensated transfers, and laws of succession: A property rights view
✍ Scribed by David E. Sisk
- Publisher
- Springer US
- Year
- 1985
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 470 KB
- Volume
- 46
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0048-5829
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
The modern theory of rent-seeking begun by Tullock, advanced by Krueger and Posner, and since carried on by others I , has largely been developed with reference to competition for monopoly rents created by governmentally enforced barriers to competition. The fundamental insight of Tullock was simply that resources would be expended to obtain the wealth transfers anticipated to accrue to monopolists. Given the reasonable assumption that rent-seekers do not value acquisition expenditures per se, barriers to entry can be considered socially costly, not only because they limit exchange and the gains therefrom, but also because the anticipated transfer of wealth from consumers to producers is absorbed, partially or wholly, in their acquisition. Even if the monopoly rights were sold at open auction by government agents so that competitors for the monopoly position transfer any anticipted rents to these agents, rent-seeking continues. It continues in the competition to obtain these rents from the government because no individual has an indisputable claim on them.