On the escalation and de-escalation of conflict

We introduce three extensions of the Hirshleifer–Skaperdas conflict game to study experimentally the effects of post-conflict behavior and repeated interaction on the allocation of effort between production and appropriation. Without repeated interaction, destruction of resources by defeated players can lead to lower appropriative efforts and higher overall efficiency. With repeated interaction, appropriative efforts are considerably reduced because some groups manage to avoid fighting altogether, often after substantial initial conflict. To attain peace, players must first engage in costly signaling by making themselves vulnerable and by forgoing the possibility to appropriate the resources of defeated opponents.     

Policy making and rent-dissipation: An experimental test

We present a transfer-seeking model of political economy that links the theory of Becker (1983) with Tullock-type models of politically contestable rents. In our model the size of the transfer is determined endogenously, and over-dissipation of rents is predicted even under conditions of risk-neutrality and perfect rationality. We implement an empirical test of this model by collecting behavioral data in a laboratory experiment. We confirm the existence of behavior that leads to over-dissipation of rents in games with both symmetric and asymmetric political power. To the extent that the transfer-seeking costs are social costs, our findings imply that the total costs of running government might be greatly underestimated if the value of the rent is used as a proxy for the rent-seeking cost. We also confirm the hypotheses that lowering the political power of one player can lead to smaller rent-seeking expenditures and to larger transfers Electronic Supplementary Material Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at . JEL Classification C91, D72     

Varieties of authoritarianism matter: Elite fragmentation,natural resources and economic growth

A broad literature suggests that political regimes matter for the growth effect of natural resources. However, while several studies have concentrated on the difference between democracies and autocracies in this respect, an important topic overlooked so far is the differences between varieties of authoritarian regimes. This study uses the political variation across sub-national regions of the Russian Federation under Vladimir Putin to understand how differences in the extent of elite fragmentation in autocracies affects the influence of resource abundance on economic growth in the short run. We find that polities with fragmented elites underperform those with consolidated elites and link this effect to higher costs of fights over rents due to higher political uncertainty.     

Rent-seeking with uncertain discriminatory power

We consider a two-player Tullock rent-seeking contest with uncertain discriminatory power in the contest success function. We examine the cases where both players are either informed or uninformed about the size of the discriminatory power, as well as the case where only one player has private information about it. We show that in all three cases the contest has a unique (Bayesian) Nash equilibrium. In each case we characterize key properties of the equilibrium.     

Subsidizing rent-seeking: Antidumping protection and the Byrd Amendment

This paper argues that a recent U.S. law, which distributes the tariff revenue resulting from successful antidumping petitions to firms that supported the petitions, increases the amount of antidumping protection requested by U.S. firms in two ways. First, by increasing the total benefits accruing to industries filing successful petitions, the law subsidizes rent-seeking. Second, by awarding these subsidies only to those firms that actively support the petition, it mitigates the free rider problem traditionally associated with collective actions. Empirical results provide strong evidence that industries have filed more antidumping petitions under the new law. Moreover, the average proportion of firms in the industry filing these petitions increased under the law, suggesting that the law at least partially alleviates free riding incentives.     

Endogenous political competition and political accountability

We contribute to the debate over the effectiveness of elections in motivating incumbents to perform well. We show that with endogenous political competition the effectiveness of democracy in disciplining officials can be largely diminished.     

寻利还是寻租——补贴制度对企业投资的影响

文章首先根据现有研究对市场中存在的功能性、选择性两种类型的政府补贴进行区分,并运用固定效应、logit与tobit模型研究了我国A股上市公司2008-2016年政府补贴对企业投资决策的影响,发现选择性补贴具有明显的人际关系化交换特征;通过对企业是否具有寻租行为与政治联系的分样本检验,发现在人际关系化下,选择性补贴具有寻租性,会占用生产性资本,表现为投资不足,而功能性补贴具有寻利性,普遍易使生产投资过度;在产业层面,通过研究两类补贴的分布特征对行业结构的影响,发现选择性补贴会更大程度地降低市场竞争性,通过logit中介效应模型与交互项检验,发现前期选择性补贴由于提高了企业投资不足的概率,增加了市场份额下降的可能性,从而市场竞争性降低;然而,尽管投资不足会增加企业退市风险,但寻租下的选择性补贴会减少企业退出市场的可能性,因此,市场竞争机制易被人际关系化下的选择性补贴扰乱。     

Rent-seeking versus productive activities in a multi-task experiment

Incentive instruments like asset ownership and performance pay often have to strike a balance between the productive incentives and the rent-seeking incentives they provide. Standard theory predicts that these instruments become less attractive when the effectiveness of rent-seeking activities increases. In contrast, theories that emphasize the importance of reciprocity suggest that this relationship may go the other way around. In this paper we test these predictions by means of a laboratory experiment. By and large our findings confirm standard theory. Incentive instruments typically become less attractive when the scope for rent-seeking activities increases. However, reciprocity motivations do seem to mitigate the adverse effects of rent-seeking opportunities to a considerable extent.     

会计准则寻租行为的研究与分析

本文从寻租理论出发,在介绍会计准则寻租可能性与可行性的基础上,从会计准则制定和执行过程中的寻租活动,以及围绕会计准则制定权展开的寻租活动的层次分析了我国目前会计准则寻租行为特征,并对如何减少准则执行中的寻租行为进行初步的对策探讨。     

An experimental investigation of asymmetric contests

Contest theory has been used in Industrial Organization to describe phenomena like R&D races, or efforts to defend a monopoly position. When pricing behavior is constrained by regulators, competition can also take the form of a contest. This paper reports on an experimental test of the effects of asymmetry in the Tullock contest success function. Both the simultaneous-move and sequential-move frameworks are considered. Despite high levels of overbidding across the different conditions, the introduction of asymmetries in the contest function generates experimental behavior on aggregate qualitatively consistent with the theoretical predictions. At the individual level, behavior seems divided into those subjects who bid very high amounts and those who bid very low amounts.