IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/acb/cbeeco/2005-448.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Rent Seeking and the Presence of Existing Distortions

Author

Listed:
  • Alex Robson

Abstract

When market distortions already exist, producers may attempt to surpress or encourage the establishment of new distortions in hitherto undistorted markets, and may have a strong incentive to appeal to the language of second best to further their private interests. In these situations, the total amount of resources spent on trying to encourage or discourage intervention in an undistorted market can exceed the sum of the partial equilibrium Harberger (1964) “triangle” and Tullock (1967) “rectangle” measures of welfare loss. This paper uses a simple example to illustrate these points

Suggested Citation

  • Alex Robson, 2005. "Rent Seeking and the Presence of Existing Distortions," ANU Working Papers in Economics and Econometrics 2005-448, Australian National University, College of Business and Economics, School of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:acb:cbeeco:2005-448
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cbe.anu.edu.au/researchpapers/econ/wp448.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. R. G. Lipsey & Kelvin Lancaster, 1956. "The General Theory of Second Best," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 24(1), pages 11-32.
    2. Arnold Harberger, 1964. "Taxation, Resource Allocation, and Welfare," NBER Chapters, in: The Role of Direct and Indirect Taxes in the Federal Reserve System, pages 25-80, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Harberger, Arnold C, 1971. "Three Basic Postulates for Applied Welfare Economics: An Interpretive Essay," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 9(3), pages 785-797, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ron Bird & Harry Liem & Susan Thorp, 2014. "Infrastructure: Real Assets and Real Returns," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 20(4), pages 802-824, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Boadway, Robin, 1999. "Le rôle de la théorie de l’optimum du second rang en économie publique," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 75(1), pages 29-65, mars-juin.
    2. Sanz Labrador, Ismael & Sanz-Sanz, José Félix, 2013. "Política fiscal y crecimiento económico: consideraciones microeconómicas y relaciones macroeconómicas," Macroeconomía del Desarrollo 5367, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL).
    3. Gylfason, Thorvaldur, 1998. "Output gains from economic stabilization," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(1), pages 81-96, June.
    4. Tikoudis, Ioannis, 2023. "Revisiting the Pigouvian tax in urban roads: Housing supply restrictions, leaking profits and spatial inequality," Economics of Transportation, Elsevier, vol. 35(C).
    5. Albon, Rob & York, Richard, 2006. "Mobile termination: Market power, externalities and their policy implications," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 30(7), pages 368-384, August.
    6. C. Benassi & E. Randon, 2015. "Optimal Commodity Taxation and Income Distribution," Working Papers wp1001, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    7. Robin Boadway, 2017. "Second-Best Theory: Ageing well at Sixty," Pacific Economic Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(2), pages 249-270, May.
    8. BOADWAY, Robin & LEITE-MONTEIRO, Manuel & MARCHAND, Maurice & PESTIEAU, Pierre, 2001. "Social insurance and redistribution," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2001041, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    9. Martin Hackmann & Joerg Heining & Roman Klimke & Maria Polyakova & Holger Seibert, 2021. "General Equilibrium Effects of Insurance Expansions: Evidence from Long-Term Care Labor Markets," Upjohn Working Papers 21-357, W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.
    10. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:4:y:2006:i:6:p:1-8 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Nicolas Astier, 2021. "Second‐best pricing for incomplete market segments: Application to electricity pricing," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 23(6), pages 1287-1311, December.
    12. Byrnes, Liam & Brown, Colin, 2015. "Australia’s renewable energy policy: the case for intervention," MPRA Paper 64977, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Alan J. Auerbach & Anthony J. Pellechio, 1978. "The Two-Part Tariff and Voluntary Market Participation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 92(4), pages 571-587.
    14. Nicholas Chesterley, 2017. "Defaults, Decision Costs and Welfare in Behavioural Policy Design," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 84(333), pages 16-33, January.
    15. Barnett, William A. & Erwin Diewert, W. & Zellner, Arnold, 2011. "Introduction to measurement with theory," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 161(1), pages 1-5, March.
    16. Randall Holcombe, 2009. "The behavioral foundations of Austrian economics," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 22(4), pages 301-313, December.
    17. Graham,Errol George & Tchale,Hardwick & Ndione,Mamadou, 2020. "An Optimal Rice Policy for Sierra Leone : Balancing Consumer and Producer Welfare," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9369, The World Bank.
    18. Eromenko, Igor, 2010. "Accession to the WTO. Computable General Equilibrium Analysis: the Case of Ukraine. Part I," MPRA Paper 67476, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Pizer, William A. & Kopp, Raymond, 2005. "Calculating the Costs of Environmental Regulation," Handbook of Environmental Economics, in: K. G. Mäler & J. R. Vincent (ed.), Handbook of Environmental Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 25, pages 1307-1351, Elsevier.
    20. Evan F. Koenig, 1985. "Indirect Methods for Regulating Externalities Under Uncertainty," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 100(2), pages 479-493.
    21. Lawrence J. White & W. Scott Frame, 2004. "Emerging Competition and Risk-Taking Incentives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac," Working Papers 04-02, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:acb:cbeeco:2005-448. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/feanuau.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.