Group competition for rents

This paper examines rent dissipation in a two-stage group rent-seeking contest without a predetermined distribution rule. the rent in this setting exhibits both public and private good characteristics depending on the stage of the contest. Focusing on the relationship between group size and aggregate rent seeking we find that social waste depends not only on total numbers but also on the distribution of population across groups. We show that group size asymmetry acts to reduce rent dissipation.     

The allocation of entrepreneurial efforts in a rent-seeking society: Evidence from China

This paper considers four types of entrepreneurial efforts: productive activities, aggressive rent seeking, defense against rent extraction, and leisure. It examines how entrepreneurs allocate efforts when facing dual-dealing relationships with politicians in a rent-seeking society: entrepreneurs not only pursue additional benefits through rent seeking, but also try to avoid extortions by politicians. Using unique city-level and firm-level data across China, we demonstrate that Chinese entrepreneurs survive in a twisted world: ordinary entrepreneurs would desire better institutional environment, but if institutional improvement is not available, they would prefer political connections which are often preoccupied by special interest groups and/or large-sized firms.     

Rent Seeking with Politically Contestable Rights to Tariff‐rate Import Quotas**

This paper analyzes rent seeking for agricultural import quotas and the associated waste of resources when politically contestable licenses are allocated to either or both importers and exporters. In a two‐stage simultaneous contest where firms seek rent for licenses and then bargain over the import/export price, it is shown that (1) rents are not dissipated completely because of uncertainty in allocation of “rights,” (2) the dissipation ratio increases if the country with a more competitive contest increases the probability of establishing licenses, (3) rent seeking may cause the market structure to change, (4) less rent is dissipated in the case of pre‐existing market power, and (5) allocation of multiple licenses decreases rent‐seeking outlays.     

Reform Unleashed Korean Growth

Before the reform in the 1960s, twin vicious circles perpetuated the shortages of foreign exchange and labor skill, and prevented the Korean economy from realizing its considerable growth potential. The breakthrough came when the Japanese labor shortage facilitated Korean exports, after economic normalization between the two countries. The reformed institutions reduced rent‐seeking and refocused Korean managerial efforts to pioneering activities. The Korean takeoff scenario is a shared theme among all four Asian newly industrialized economies cited by Lucas (1988) as showcases.     

DO TAX CUTS ENCOURAGE RENT SEEKING BY TOP CORPORATE EXECUTIVES? THEORY AND EVIDENCE

This paper explores the role of tax policy in shaping incentives for executive effort (labor supply) and rent seeking within the firm. We develop a theoretical model that distinguishes between effort and rent‐seeking responses to income taxes, and provides a framework to estimate a lower bound for the rent‐seeking response. Using executive compensation and governance data, we find that rent seeking represents an important component of the response to changes in tax rates, especially among executives in firms with the worst corporate governance. (JEL D31, G30, H21)     

Group Contests with Internal Conflict and Power Asymmetry

We investigate simultaneous inter‐ and intra‐group conflict in the shadow of within‐group power asymmetry and complementarity in members' group‐conflict efforts. A more symmetric group faces a higher degree of internal conflict, and might expend more effort in external conflict when the group‐conflict effort technology is highly complementary. Depending on the degree of complementarity, the stronger player's relative contribution to external conflict might be higher in a more asymmetric group and, as a result, it is possible for the weaker player to earn a higher payoff. In the absence of any complementarity, the rent‐dissipation is non‐monotonic with the within‐group power asymmetry.     

Bad Apples: Political Paralysis and the Quality of Politicians

Why do elected officials often suffer from political paralysis and fail to implement the best policies available? This paper considers a new and intuitive explanation that focuses on the quality of the politicians competing for office. The key insight is that a “good” incumbent with preferences identical to those of a representative voter will want to keep rent‐seeking politicians out of office; he may do so by distorting his policy choices to signal his type and win reelection. The value of signaling and staying in office increases with the fraction of rent‐seeking types in the population of politicians. Electing good types may therefore not be enough to ensure that the best policies are implemented, especially when rent seeking is widespread. This provides a new explanation for why political failure is particularly severe in corrupt democracies.     

Bargaining with Rent Seekers

Consider a rent‐seeking game, which has government bargain with firms over dividing the rents. In period 1, each firm can invest to increase the probability that the rent will appear. In period 2, the parties bargain. In equilibrium, though firms will invest more than the socially optimal level, rent‐seeking expenditures may be low. Firms that collude to restrict investment maximize joint profits by investing at a positive, non‐infinitesimal level, and restrict investment even if the cost of rent‐seeking effort is zero.     

Exit from Rent‐Seeking Contests

The object of this paper is to investigate the long‐run behaviour of rent‐seekers in a situation where they incur negative expected payoffs due to increasing returns to rent‐seeking expenditures. To this end, we embed the one‐shot rent‐seeking game presented by Tullock (1980) in the war‐of‐attrition framework. In this multi‐period setting, each player not only determines his or her rent‐seeking expenditure but also chooses a mixed strategy on whether to stay in or exit from rent‐seeking competition in each period. JEL Classification Numbers: D72, C72, L12     

On the Existence and Uniqueness of Pure-Strategy Nash Equilibrium in Asymmetric Rent-Seeking Contests

There can be three types of heterogeneity among players in a rent‐seeking contest. First, effectiveness of player's effort on the winning probabilities may differ among players. Secondly, players may evaluate the rent or prize of the rent‐seeking contest differently. Thirdly, players may face different financial constraints. This article proves under standard assumptions in the literature that there exists a unique pure‐strategy Nash equilibrium in a general asymmetric rent‐seeking contest with these three types of heterogeneity among players.     

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.     

INTENSITY OF COMPETITION, ENTRY AND ENTRY DETERRENCE IN RENT SEEKING CONTESTS

In rent seeking contests agents compete over a given amount of resource a prize. To increase the likelihood of winning the prize, the agents expend efforts. This paper addresses the issue of entry to and entry deterrence from rent seeking contest. The main purpose of the analysis is to provide an explanation for the empirical fact that the number of participants in contests is usually small. I also obtain results on the relationship between the intensity of competition in a contest and the amount of the contenders'expenditures.     

WINNER-HELP-LOSER GROUP FORMATION IN RENT-SEEKING CONTESTS*

We define a winner-help-loser group in a rent-seeking contest as follows: (a) the member players compete noncooperatively to win the rent, and (b) if a member player wins the rent, he helps the losing member players according to the previously written agreement. We demonstrate that one and only one winner-help-loser group is formed voluntarily. One important consequence of such group formation is that rent dissipation is small relative to individual rent seeking. Therefore, such group formation decreases the social cost associated with rent seeking and thus decreases the economic inefficiency of rent seeking.     

SEEKING RENT IN THE INFORMAL SECTOR

Rent seeking within the vast informal segment of the developing world is a relatively under‐explored topic in the interface of labor market policies and public economics. Moreover, how rent seeking and corruption within the informal segment gets affected by economic reforms targeted for the formal sector is rarely discussed in the literature. This paper fills the gap. We identify conditions under which economic reform in the formal segment will increase the rate of corruption or rent seeking in the informal sector and raise the pay‐off for those involved in rent‐seeking activities. When the formal sector contracts due to reforms, rent seeking in the informal sector may increase and lower the level of welfare unconditionally. Economic reforms may increase corruption instead of reducing it, unlike standard conjectures.     

Political Pressure or Rent Seeking? The Role of Mutual Funds in China's Split Share Structure Reform

In this paper, we provide further evidence on the role of mutual funds in China using the split share structure reform as an experiment. We find no supportive evidence for the political pressure hypothesis of Firth et al. (2010), but provide a set of unique results that are consistent with rent‐seeking behaviour by mutual funds. In addition, fund‐level governance can weaken the negative relationship between compensation ratio and fund ownership. Finally, we document a specific form of private benefits that can contribute to rent‐seeking behaviour by mutual funds.     

Government size and economic growth in an endogenous growth model with rent‐seeking

We explore the relationship between government size and economic growth in an endogenous growth model with human capital and an unproductive capital which facilitates rent‐seeking. With exogenous as well as endogenous time discounting, we find a non‐monotonic relationship between the size of government and economic growth. We find that with very high (low) discounting, there is a unique low (high) growth equilibrium, regardless of the size of government. For the intermediate range of discounting, there are multiple equilibria and the growth outcome depends on the size of government. With endogenous time discounting, the growth outcome is path dependent and depends on the level of inherited human capital. However, there is only one stable growth regime and the economy endogenously switches to it. When the institutional constraints on rent‐seeking are not extremely high, the stable regime is the one in which there is a high‐growth equilibrium for a smaller size of the government and for larger size, both the high‐growth and the low‐growth equilibrium coexist. When the institutional constraints on rent‐seeking are extremely high, there exists only a unique high‐growth equilibrium irrespective of the size of government. Furthermore, economies with bigger size of the government and/or with poor quality institutions will take longer to endogenously switch to this stable growth regime.     

Enduring rents

Rent seeking is often studied with reference to a contemporaneous rent evaluated at a point in time. We study the social cost of rent seeking when rents endure over time, but may have to be re-contested because of imperfect rent protection, or may disappear because of deregulation. The present value of a contested rent measures the social cost of rent seeking, irrespective of imperfect rent protection and the prospect of deregulation. Rent seeking is discouraged by the inability of governments to commit to protect rents and by their inability to commit to rent-generating regulations and policies. Moreover, lasting deregulation can preempt a substantial fraction of the potential rent seeking cost.     

RENT DISSIPATION AND THE SOCIAL COST OF PRICE POLICY

This paper uses a general equilibrium-based exchange economy model to examine rent seeking for a price policy. Opposing interests spend resources to influence the government's choice of a price vector. Rents, the willingness to pay for the policy, are determined endogenously from the Nash equilibirum of a non-cooperative game. Numerical simulations explore the degree to which rents are dissipated by wasteful rent seeking. It is found that dissipation, measured as the ratio of rent-seeking costs to rents garnered, can grow without limit, and is greatest when opponents are evenly matched. Dissipation is smallest with widely disparate groups, a result that might help explain the underdissipation that seems to occur in many industries.     

Sabotage in rent-seeking contests

This article considers the interaction between two types ofeffort in lobbying contests: effort that improves the contestant'sown performance (standard rent seeking), and effort that reducesparticular rivals' performance (sabotage). Due to a positiveexternality, sabotage is a 'small number' phenomenon. Sabotagemay increase lobbying efforts and the dissipation rate in lobbyingcontests compared to a situation in which sabotage is not feasible.     

THE TWO‐WAY RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN GOVERNMENT SPENDING AND CORRUPTION AND ITS EFFECTS ON ECONOMIC GROWTH

The existing empirical evidence suggests that in low‐income economies, an increase in government spending leads to a reduction of growth. This article aims to explain this empirical fact by considering a growth model that incorporates a two‐way relationship between corruption and government spending. That is, government spending gives rise to corruption and rent seeking, which feeds back by distorting the structure and size of government spending. In addition, the cost of corruption depends on the wage rate. Therefore, in low‐income economies, increases in government spending tend to generate larger social losses caused by a higher level of rent dissipation and a concomitant rise in corruption and government inefficiency. Consequently, in such economies, an increase in government spending is more likely to result in a decline of economic growth. (JEL H3, O11, O41)