Rent Seeking and Allocative Efficiency

This paper considers a rent‐seeking game (specifically, a winner‐takes‐all contest) with incomplete information. By allowing for sequential moves, a Bayesian‐Stackelberg equilibrium can be constructed. It can be shown that, at the Bayesian‐Stackelberg equilibrium, it is always possible that the allocative efficiency argument fails. That is, there are cases in which the Stackelberg follower is more efficient but loses the contest. Using a specific class of distributions, it is also shown that sometimes the corrupt official will choose the Bayesian‐Stackelberg equilibrium over the Bayesian‐Nash equilibrium in order to maximise the expected bribe revenue. That is, when designing the rules of the rent‐seeking game, the dynamic nature of competition will be taken into account.     

Orchestrating Rent Seeking Contests

Contests have different, sometimes quite complex, organisational structures. In particular, while most of the existing literature focusses on simultaneous contests, multistage contests are also quite frequently encountered. This paper seeks to provide a rationale for the latter by endogenising the choice of a contest structure, which is made by an organiser of a contest interested in maximising the efforts expended by the contenders.     

On Opposition to Rent Seeking: Implications for Developing Countries

A model is developed to study the implications of the presence of rent-opposing activities for the measurement of deadweight losses and for cost–benefit analysis. The analysis provides an upper bound on the social cost of rent-seeking in the presence of potential rent-opposers. Remarks are offered on the interactions between merits and skills in the determination of success in rent-seeking, and on the pervasiness of corruption in developing economies.     

An Exploration of Rent Seeking*

The aim of this paper is 10 survey critically the recent literature on rent seeking and Directly Unproductive Profit-Seeking Activities (DUP). The links with the related literatures on transactions costs and property rights are also explored. It is argued that a clearer understanding of wasteful competition emerges if the framework of constitutional economics is adopted. It is furthermore argued that a dynamic framework is most suitable to analyze wasteful competition     

Rent Seeking with Efforts and Bids

We introduce bids in a rent-seeking contest. Players compete for a prize. Apart from exerting lobbying efforts, they also submit a bid which is payable only if they win the prize. We show that our model has a unique Nash equilibrium in pure strategies, in which each active player submits the same bid, while the sum of all efforts equals that bid. In equilibrium there is underdissipation of rent.     

Rent Seeking Behavior in Transition Countries: The Case of Romania

This paper points out, in the changing institutional setting of transition in Romania, Some relevant factors influencing economic actors to behave in a way that pushes them to devote resources to unproductive goals, rather than to embark on activities that add economic and social value. The theoretical insights offered in the literature of rent seeking are applied to the issues of transition. A mathematical model of a rent seeking economy is presented, analyzing the influence of interest groups activity on the overall income of the economy. Some examples of rent seeking behavior that severely hamper the economic efficiency are illustrated for the case of Romania. The conclusion is that, in appreciating the progress in transition, the reduction in rent seeking is an important factor to be taken into consideration.     

寻租理论在我国的研究与发展

寻租理论是由《经济社会体制比较》杂志于1988年首先引入我国改革理论的研究的,这一理论为我国理论界分析转轨过程中腐败问题提供了新的方法和新的视点,也为我国政府适应市场经济体制的要求转变职能提供了新的思路。《经济社会体制比较》既注意刊载国外寻租理论的经典文献,又注意关注我国理论界的讨论热点,并从比较中提出了改革的对策,对推动我国改革理论的深化发挥了重要作用。20世纪90年代以后,寻租理论广泛应用于各类经济行为和现象的研究,特别是转轨经济的研究,至今这一趋势仍在继续。     

国有企业外部人控制:一个寻租视角

国有企业的公共物品性导致国有企业蜕变为一个多重寻租网络.政府作为国有企业的外部控制人,借助政企不分、个人权力的无约束和责任体系弱化、多层委托与多重代理等体制性弊病的掩饰,与国有企业代理人合谋寻租,国有企业的"内部人控制"应运而生.可以说,国有企业若不存在"外部人控制","内部人控制"几乎不可能产生;国有企业若存在"外部人控制","内部人控制"便几乎一定会产生."外部人控制"产生的必要前提是国有企业泛化为公共物品,而国有企业泛化为公共物品,必须具备以下条件:包括存在可供寻租的租金、存在制度性的寻租通道、存在租金和信息的传递系统.国有企业外部人控制具有极大的危害,主要表现为降低企业家的生产性努力水平和使得企业家行为寻租化.解决问题的关键在于进行产权改革,使产权得到清晰界定并得到有效保护,同时不会出现事后寻租的现象.     

公司多元化折价:寻租与投资偏差

相对于业务集中的企业来说,多元化公司往往出现市场价值贬损,尽管造成这一现象的原因多种多样,但部门经理寻租引致公司经理配置资源出现偏差,则是产生公司多元化折价的重要根源之一.文章基于这一思想,通过建立模型进行了深入分析,得出多元化公司往往出现折价并给出了影响折价的一些重要因素.     

Constitutional Design for a Rent Seeking Society: The Voting Rule Choice Revisited

Buchanan and Tullock's original trade-off model of constitutional design is used to analyze how constitutional design affects post-constitutional rent seeking, and, in turn, how the anticipation of post-constitution rent seeking should lead to modification of constitutional design — specifically with respect to imposing and maintaining effective (composite) supermajority decision rules.     

Political Competition, Rent Seeking and the Choice of Environmental Policy Instruments

This paper investigates the impact of political lobbying on the choice of environmental policy instruments. It is argued that the prevalence of pollution emission standards over more efficient policy instruments may result from rent seeking behaviour. The model further predicts that when an emission standard is used to control pollution, rival political parties have an incentive to set the same standard. There is therefore a convergence of policies. Moreover, it is shown that emission taxes are more likely to be supported and proposed by political parties which represent environmental interest groups. This feature appears to accord with the observed support for environmental taxes by Green parties in Europe, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere.     

股权再融资、盈余管理与大股东的寻租行为

我国上市公司处于大股东的超强控制状态,大股东与中小股东之间存在严重的信息不对称,导致大股东在股权再融资过程中表现出强烈的盈余管理动机.本文研究了我国资本市场参与者的行为与盈余管理之间的关系,并分析了对资本配置效率的影响效应.大股东通过操纵报告盈余来改变会计盈余的时间分布和误导投资者,从而攫取更多的隐性收益,造成资本市场配置效率的降低.研究结果表明:(1)大股东通过盈余管理在股权再融资过程中可以获得中小股东无法得到的隐性收益;(2)大股东的收益随着盈余管理程度的增加而提升,中小股东的财富随着盈余管理程度的增加而降低;(3)盈余管理程度的增加将降低上市公司的资本配置效率和企业价值.因此,大股东通过盈余管理实现了对小股东财富的掠夺效应,造成了上市公司资本配置效率、公司价值、声誉和后续融资能力的下降.     

Rent Seeking for Pure Public Goods: Wealth and Group's Size Heterogeneity

We study how between‐group wealth and size asymmetries affect aggregate rent‐seeking efforts when two groups compete for the allocation of a pure public good. Unlike with previous analyses on between‐group asymmetries, we measure the utility cost of rent‐seeking in terms of the loss in private consumption an individual faces when contributing to this activity. Our main result is that fewer between‐group asymmetries do not necessarily imply greater aggregate rent‐seeking efforts. The result is at odds with the commonly held notion that the more homogeneous the contestants in a static rent‐seeking model, the greater the aggregate rent‐seeking efforts.     

差别待遇、政策寻租与过渡性资本外逃

过渡性资本外逃是一种特殊的资本流动方式,其动机就是以外籍的身份向国内投资.我国政府对于外商投资给予的超国民待遇和税收优惠是过渡性资本外逃的主要动因.这种政策对于改革开放初期经济的现代化、市场化建设所发挥的历史性作用是毋庸置疑的,但是随着改革开放的进一步深入,政府对于外资的超国民待遇也在产生越来越大的负面效应.因此,我国政府应当对外资的超国民待遇进行重新定位,逐步取消具有明显歧视性的政策,消除内资企业的政策性寻租动机,提高内资企业的投资水平.     

官员规模、公共品供给与社会收入差距:权力寻租的视角

官员规模、公共品供给效率以及社会收入差距是当下社会比较关注的问题,本文试图把三个问题纳入到一个故事框架下来分析和解释。生产的进行需要官员提供资源帮扶,这需要通过雇佣下级官员来做到;当私人利益进入上级官员的收益函数时,上级官员就会促使资源的供给"人为"稀缺来设租,从而便于下级官员从生产者处收取资源租金;而资源租金的收取使得下级官员的收益高于其外部选择权收益,从而增加了下级官员职位的竞争性,又由于上级官员对下级官员职位任命权的垄断,使上级官员从下级官员处收取职位租金。分析表明,权力的设租寻租行为是造成社会收入差距出现的一个重要原因;在一个能较好限制官员关注私人收益的社会中,官员规模较小、公共品供给效率较高且因权力寻租而造成的社会收入差距较小。     

Rent Seeking and Government Ownership of Firms: An Application to China''s Township–Village Enterprises

Using its control of regulated inputs, a government agency extracts rents from a manager who undertakes an investment. Such government rent-seeking activity leads to a typical hold-up problem. Government ownership serves as a second-best commitment mechanism, through which the government agency will restrain itself from the rent-seeking activity and may even offer the manager assistance in the form of tax breaks and subsidies. This mechanism works at a cost, however, as government ownership also compromises ex post managerial incentives and creates distortion in resource allocation. Nevertheless, government ownership Pareto dominates private ownership under certain conditions. These conditions correspond to a host of stylized empirical observations concerning local-government-owned firms, i.e., township–village enterprises, during China's transition to a market economy.J. Comp. Econ., June 2002 30(4), pp. 787–811. Department of Economics, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, 328 David Kinley Hall, Urbana, Illinois 61801. © 2002 Association for Comparative Economic Studies. Published by Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved.Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: D23, D72, L33.     

The Rise and Fall of National Allocative Planning in Australia

In 1979 the Australian Labor Party's supreme policy making body, Federal Conference, proposed that a future Labor government embark on an extensive program of economic planning. In addition to continuing Keynesian monetary and fiscal policy, the Conference argued in favour of the introduction of a more comprehensive form of stability planning, or incomes policy; partial allocative, or industry, planning; and a national allocative plan. Since coming to power in 1983, the Federal Government has introduced an incomes policy as well as a number of industry plans. However, it has rejected national allocative planning. In this article we discuss the differences between these forms of economic planning and analyse the reasons which might explain the Government's rejection of national allocative planning.     

On the Neutrality of the Resource Rent Tax*

This paper investigates the existence of an investtnent'neutral Resource Rent Tax using a model of optimal investment to extract an unknown quantity of resource stock. This model is solved by numerical methods to show that the levels of profit margin and resource stock uncertainty are key parameter values in determining both the existence and the characteristics of an investment-neutral Resource Rent Tax.     

The Economics of Tenancy Rent Control

We consider a rent control regime where rent increases on, and eviction of, a sitting tenant are forbidden. When apartments become vacant landlords may negotiate new rents. If inflation exists, landlords prefer to rent to short-staying tenants. Since departure-date-contingent contracts are forbidden and landlords cannot tell whether tenants are short-stayers, an adverse selection problem arises, with a Pareto inefficient equilibrium. When tenant types are determined endogenously, multiple equilibria can arise where one equilibrium is Pareto dominated. Abolition of the rent control regime, cannot only shift the equilibrium out of this inferior outcome, but also result in across-the-board lowering of rents.     

Allocative inefficiency properties of price-cap regulation

The paper deals with the argument that a price-cap regulated firm maximizing profits under the price-cap constraint will set prices that over time approach the Ramsey structure. My analysis explores the effects of price caps on the structure of prices. The results are in important aspects at variance with the claim of convergence to a Ramsey structure.