Efficient Rent Seeking

Tullock, Gordon

doi:10.1007/978-1-4757-5055-3_2

Cited by 969 publications

(613 citation statements)

References 1 publication

Supporting

Mentioning

596

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Subsequent studies of rent-seeking contests showed that quite high rent dissipation and thus high social losses from rent seeking could be expected. 4 Tullock observed that there appeared to be less rent seeking and less rent dissipation than might be predicted (Tullock 1972(Tullock , 1989(Tullock , 1993. Tullock thus proposed that contestable rents result in socially unproductive use of resources (Tullock 1967) and initiated a theory of contests to describe the incentives underlying the unproductive resource use (Tullock 1980).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Where are the rent seekers?

Hillman

Ursprung

2016

Const Polit Econ

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In a remarkably simple and yet one of the most original and insightful observations of 20th century economics, Gordon Tullock pointed out that there are efficiency losses when public policies and political behavior create contestable rents. Tullock also observed that social losses from contesting rents appeared smaller than might be expected, so raising the question 'where are the rent seekers?' Tullock proposed that political accountability and 'free-riding' incentives in interest groups limit social losses from rent seeking. We affirm Tullock's explanations, which apply differently under different political institutions. We compare Tullock with Gary Becker, who focused on deadweight losses from redistribution and concluded, in contrast to Tullock, that political redistribution is efficient. The comparison with Becker highlights the significance of the recognition of Tullock's concept of rent seeking. By excluding rent-seeking losses from the social costs of redistribution, Becker could arrive at a conclusion more favorable than Tullock to an ideology that sees merit in extensive redistribution. Tullock's model, although more encompassing of actual social costs of redistribution, would have been less welcome in the social democratic welfare state.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Where are the rent seekers?

Hillman

Ursprung

2016

Const Polit Econ

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…32 See Goeree et al (2005). 33 See, e.g., Tullock (1967Tullock ( , 1980, and Baye et al (1993). 34 Baye et al (1996).…”

Section: All-pay Auctionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Going, Going, Gone! A Swift Tour of Auction Theory and its Applications

Maasland

Onderstal

2006

De Economist

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Let the probability that the agenda setter wins the election to decide both the government and the form-of-state be P; the probability that the opposition wins is then 1 -P. In accordance with Tullock (1980), it is assumed that P depends on the simultaneous choice of campaign effort by A and B, P = P(C A , C B ).…”

Section: The Choice Of the Agenda Setter: Parliamentary Elections Andmentioning

confidence: 99%