This paper examines the relationship between rent seeking and economic performance when governments cannot enforce property rights. With imperfect credit markets and a fixed cost to rent seeking, only wealthy agents choose to engage in it, as it allows them to protect their wealth from expropriation. Hence, the level of rent seeking and economic performance are determined by the initial distribution of income and wealth. When individuals also differ in their productivity, not all wealthy agents become rent seekers, and the social costs of rent seeking are typically lower. In both cases, multiple equilibria with different levels of rent seeking and production are possible. Copyright 2006, International Monetary Fund
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Article provided by Palgrave Macmillan Journals in its journal IMF Staff Papers.
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Paper
Shankha Chakraborty & Era Dabla-Norris, 2005.
"Rent Seeking,"
IMF Working Papers
05/43, International Monetary Fund.
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Find related papers by JEL classification: D23 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Organizational Behavior; Transaction Costs; Property Rights D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Models of Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior O11 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Macroeconomic Analyses of Economic Development