IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/copoec/v28y2017i1d10.1007_s10602-016-9228-4.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Political incentives for rent creation

Author

Listed:
  • Randall G. Holcombe

    (Florida State University)

Abstract

Rent-seeking is often depicted as a contest in which rent-seekers compete for a prize—the rent. In the process of rent-seeking, much or perhaps all of the rent is dissipated through the costs the contestants incur to compete. Rent dissipation is inconsistent with the incentives of both the rent-seekers and those who create the rents. Policymakers have an incentive to create rents only if they gain from the process, and their gain comes from sharing any surplus that goes to those who obtain the rents. A surplus can be created through a barrier to entry into rent-seeking. When institutions that generate barriers to entry into rent-seeking break down, rent-seeking competitions can occur in which all rents are dissipated, but this should be a special case rather than the general rule in rent-seeking.

Suggested Citation

  • Randall G. Holcombe, 2017. "Political incentives for rent creation," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 28(1), pages 62-78, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:copoec:v:28:y:2017:i:1:d:10.1007_s10602-016-9228-4
    DOI: 10.1007/s10602-016-9228-4
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10602-016-9228-4
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10602-016-9228-4?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paan Jindapon & Christopher Whaley, 2015. "Risk lovers and the rent over-investment puzzle," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 164(1), pages 87-101, July.
    2. Holcombe,Randall G., 2018. "Political Capitalism," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781108449908, September.
    3. R. H. Coase, 2013. "The Problem of Social Cost," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 56(4), pages 837-877.
    4. Congleton, Roger D., 1984. "Committees and rent-seeking effort," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(1-2), pages 197-209, November.
    5. Gordon Tullock, 1975. "The Transitional Gains Trap," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 6(2), pages 671-678, Autumn.
    6. James Lake & Maia Linask, 2015. "Costly distribution and the non-equivalence of tariffs and quotas," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 165(3), pages 211-238, December.
    7. Jarrell, Gregg A, 1978. "The Demand for State Regulation of the Electric Utility Industry," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 21(2), pages 269-295, October.
    8. Toke S. Aidt, 2016. "Rent seeking and the economics of corruption," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 27(2), pages 142-157, June.
    9. Wittman, Donald, 1989. "Why Democracies Produce Efficient Results," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(6), pages 1395-1424, December.
    10. Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci & Francesco Parisi, 2014. "Returns to effort in rent-seeking games," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 159(1), pages 99-104, April.
    11. Krueger, Anne O, 1974. "The Political Economy of the Rent-Seeking Society," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 64(3), pages 291-303, June.
    12. Roger Congleton, 1988. "Evaluating rent-seeking losses: Do the welfare gains of lobbyists count?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 56(2), pages 181-184, February.
    13. Roger D. Congleton & Arye L. Hillman (ed.), 2015. "Companion to the Political Economy of Rent Seeking," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 15325.
    14. repec:elg:eechap:15325_2 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Baumol, William J., 1996. "Entrepreneurship: Productive, unproductive, and destructive," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 3-22, January.
    16. Gary S. Becker, 1983. "A Theory of Competition Among Pressure Groups for Political Influence," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 98(3), pages 371-400.
    17. Elie Appelbaum & Eliakim Katz, 2008. "Seeking Rents by Setting Rents: The Political Economy of Rent Seeking," Springer Books, in: Roger D. Congleton & Arye L. Hillman & Kai A. Konrad (ed.), 40 Years of Research on Rent Seeking 1, pages 555-569, Springer.
    18. Nti, Kofi O, 1999. "Rent-Seeking with Asymmetric Valuations," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 98(3-4), pages 415-430, March.
    19. Anthony Downs, 1957. "An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65(2), pages 135-135.
    20. James Buchanan, 1990. "The domain of constitutional economics," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 1(1), pages 1-18, December.
    21. William Corcoran & Gordon Karels, 1985. "Efficient rents 1 rent-seeking behavior in the long-run," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 46(3), pages 227-246, January.
    22. Dougan, William R & Snyder, James M, 1993. "Are Rents Fully Dissipated?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 77(4), pages 793-813, December.
    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. Thai Q. Nguyen & Giang K. Nguyen, 2020. "The impacts of civil society and inequality on the extractive capacity of authoritarian regimes: a conceptual model and the case study of Vietnam," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 31(4), pages 489-508, December.
    2. Bryan P. Cutsinger & Alexander Marsella & Yang Zhou, 2022. "Insuring legislative wealth transfers: theory and evidence," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 192(1), pages 127-144, July.
    3. Peter K. Hazlett & Chandler S. Reilly, 2023. "Bureaucratic rent creation: the case of price discrimination in the market for postsecondary education," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 34(2), pages 226-256, June.
    4. Randall G. Holcombe, 2019. "Transitional gains and rent extraction," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 181(1), pages 127-139, October.
    5. Matthew D. Mitchell, 2019. "Uncontestable favoritism," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 181(1), pages 167-190, October.
    6. Victor I. Espinosa & José Antonio Peña-Ramos & Fátima Recuero-López, 2021. "The Political Economy of Rent-Seeking: Evidence from Spain’s Support Policies for Renewable Energy," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(14), pages 1-16, July.
    7. Randall G. Holcombe, 2023. "The transformative impact of rent-seeking theory on the study of public choice," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 196(1), pages 157-167, July.

    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. Arye L. Hillman & Heinrich W. Ursprung, 2016. "Where are the rent seekers?," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 27(2), pages 124-141, June.
    2. Arye L. Hillman & Ngo Van Long, 2017. "Rent Seeking: The Social Cost of Contestable Benefits," CESifo Working Paper Series 6462, CESifo.
    3. Glenn Furton & Adam Martin, 2019. "Beyond market failure and government failure," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 178(1), pages 197-216, January.
    4. Arye Hillman & Ngo Van Long, 2017. "The social cost of contestable benefits," CIRANO Working Papers 2017s-11, CIRANO.
    5. Randall G. Holcombe, 2019. "Transitional gains and rent extraction," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 181(1), pages 127-139, October.
    6. Darcy W E Allen, 2020. "When Entrepreneurs Meet:The Collective Governance of New Ideas," World Scientific Books, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., number q0269, September.
    7. Randall G. Holcombe, 2018. "Checks and Balances: Enforcing Constitutional Constraints," Economies, MDPI, vol. 6(4), pages 1-12, October.
    8. Klein, Peter G. & Mahoney, Joseph T. & McGahan, Anita M. & Pitelis, Christos N., 2009. "Toward a Theory of Public Entrepreneurship," Working Papers 09-0106, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, College of Business.
    9. Michael C. Munger, 2019. "Tullock and the welfare costs of corruption: there is a “political Coase Theorem”," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 181(1), pages 83-100, October.
    10. Roger D. Congleton, 2019. "On the emergence of a classic work: a short history of the impact of Gordon Tullock’s Welfare Costs of Tariffs, Monopolies, and Theft," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 181(1), pages 5-12, October.
    11. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 2002. "Political economics and public finance," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 24, pages 1549-1659, Elsevier.
    12. Christopher John Boudreaux, 2015. "Democratic age and the size of governmen," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 35(3), pages 1531-1542.
    13. Mehrdad Vahabi, 2011. "Appropriation, violent enforcement, and transaction costs: a critical survey," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 147(1), pages 227-253, April.
    14. Matthew D. Mitchell, 2019. "Uncontestable favoritism," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 181(1), pages 167-190, October.
    15. Arye L. Hillman & John G. Riley, 1989. "Politically Contestable Rents And Transfers," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 1(1), pages 17-39, March.
    16. Holcombe,Randall G., 2018. "Political Capitalism," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781108449908, October.
    17. Brian C. Albrecht & Joshua R. Hendrickson & Alexander William Salter, 2022. "Evolution, uncertainty, and the asymptotic efficiency of policy," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 192(1), pages 169-188, July.
    18. Adarkwah Yaw Antwi & John Adams, 2003. "Rent-seeking Behaviour and its Economic Costs in Urban Land Transactions in Accra, Ghana," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 40(10), pages 2083-2098, September.
    19. Arye L. Hillman & Heinrich W. Ursprung, 2016. "Academic exclusion: some experiences," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 167(1), pages 1-20, April.
    20. Randall G. Holcombe, 2022. "Creative destruction: getting ahead and staying ahead in a capitalist economy," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 35(4), pages 467-480, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Rent seeking; Rent dissipation; Transitional gains; Rent extraction; Elite theory;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D02 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Institutions: Design, Formation, Operations, and Impact
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • H11 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - Structure and Scope of Government

    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:kap:copoec:v:28:y:2017:i:1:d:10.1007_s10602-016-9228-4. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.